Gentlemen of Last Resort
by Sequitur
Summary: Victorian AU.  When the police are uninterested in Mr. Timothy McGee's problem, he manages to persuade the mysterious Mr. Anthony and the dangerous Mr. Gibbs to take on his case.  He may live to regret this.
1. Chapter I

AUTHOR'S NOTE: A Victorian AU with just a hint of steampunk, dedicated to my roommate, who said, "Hey, you know what you should write? Victorian NCIS," and then cackled madly. So—introducing Mr. Timothy McGee, the "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" Mr. Anthony, the inscrutable Mr. Gibbs, the kindly Dr. Mallard, the charming Miss Abigail, and the mystery-wrapped-in-an-enigma Lady David. I've done my best to keep out obvious historical errors—and give full credit to _What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew_, by Daniel Pool, for the bits I _did _get right—but there are certainly implausibilities here. I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. Updates every other day.

Also, in case anyone, given my reputation, reads this chapter and wonders where on earth Tony's gotten himself off to, I can guarantee he'll be along shortly.

()

**Gentlemen of Last Resort**

_If the machinery of the Law could be depended on to fathom every case of suspicion, and to conduct every process of inquiry, with moderate assistance only from the lubricating influences of oil of gold, the events which fill these pages might have claimed their share of the public attention in a Court of Justice_.

Wilkie Collins, _The Woman in White_

_It's a sweet faith to have in the world, that it works the way it claims to._

Mr. Anthony

**Chapter I**

When he was a child, Timothy McGee's nose had always been tipped black with ink. He had kept his head buried in the pamphlets and chapbooks that his father had brought back—some still grainy with soot—from London, and he had read adventure stories and crime stories—both pleasantly lurid and the foundation of dreams and nightmares—but most particularly, he had read the science books. He had read them until the stitching unraveled along the spine and then he had brought them to his mother to sew them into books again—later she had taught him how to do this himself and he had sewn them up to be tight and indestructible, more manuals than chapbooks, and he would line them up along his bed and think that one day—in London—he would have the kind of life where he would buy books—real books, leather books, durable books, _thick _books—by the pound. And know everything about everything. And still have ink on his nose.

The part about the ink had been true, at least: ink on his nose, and soot in his eyes, and nothing at all in his belly.

Sighing heavily, he gathered up the pieces of the clock once more. It was a truth, he thought, acknowledged by everyone but him, that no one really wanted a steam-powered clock that would most likely cause severe burns. And in truth, he could hardly blame him for that.

Though he could easily blame himself for failing, and having soon to return home with nothing earned and nothing achieved, all his seed money scattered fruitlessly to the winds. His parents would not speak a word of their disappointment, but he knew that sending him to London had been an extravagance that they had been ill-able to afford. Now it was all ruin.

At least he had a place to sleep. He had that much, still—due only to the kindness of his landlord, Mr. Davies, who had marveled at each and every piece of fumbling machinery that Timothy had painstakingly constructed in the rented room that doubled as his workshop. It had been a good long while since he had contributed much in the way of rent, but nevertheless Mr. Davies was always happy to see him as he trod the mire of London into the front hall.

"Ah, Timothy! And how did the day move?"

"In a peculiarly downwards direction," Timothy said, unburdening himself of the clockwork piece. "You may have this, sir, if you like—though I should warn you, it is prone to some spouting-off."

Mr. Davies took the clock in his hands with reverence. "Such a beautiful thing it is," he said. "And what's a little steam, eh? I'll simply keep it well away from anything easily scalded while it's set to ticking."

"Most men are not so willing to compromise for the sake of science."

Mr. Davies blinked owlishly at him. He was near-sighted, and saw all the world, he'd told Timothy, as though through a bit of water. It made his appreciation of Timothy's work both more and less flattering. "Oh, but it's nothing to do with the science of it at all. They're just beautiful things, what you make. Like they're spun out of gold and glass and sugar." He held the clock up to the light and the lamps made it turn almost liquid, like a hazy of stained glass and gleaming metalwork, and for an instant, Timothy could see what Mr. Davies saw in them—the haze of color, of light. "Perhaps you ought to give up peddling them on the street and market them to the quality. As art, eh?"

"Perhaps," Timothy said. "But until then, I give you joy of it—and beg you to keep it far from you if it is keeping the time."

And wearily he went up to bed. Soon—tomorrow, even—he would have to start the letter to his family, telling them of his defeat in London and asking their advice as to when he should make his way back home. And work in a shop for the rest of his days, with no adventure and no science beyond the kind the cheap-inked pamphlets could provide.

He worried himself into sleep, and dreamed thin dreams punctuated by loud noises, like thunderclaps—which were, he thought, the heavy sounds of his hopes thudding to the very bottom of his soul, though as it turned out, the sound was something altogether different.

()

Timothy breakfasted, as always, in his room—Mr. Davies had urged him more than once to come down in the mornings and have a bit of something, but the burden of his indebtedness to Mr. Davies's kindness already hung about his neck like a millstone. He ate bread and cheese in his room and shed crumbs onto his books. _I still have books_, he thought, though it would be best if he sold the best of them to either pay Mr. Davies or else repay his parents for their sadly misspent faith in him. He tried to banish the thoughts for the moment, at least, and concentrate instead on a fascinating schematic drawing, but the pleasure had gone out of him the moment he had thought of selling the books. He would have nothing, nothing at all.

The doing of it would be the hard thing—afterwards, he could at least be thankful that he'd summoned up his courage to make the right choice. And so he gathered up the best of his few books in his arms and went downstairs, intending to go as quickly as possible out the door so that he did not disturb Mr. Davies, who, he was sure, would object most strenuously to being paid with the blood money—ink money—from the selling of Timothy's books. So out the door and onwards—

But there was a stillness to the house that it had always lacked before—Mr. Davies was a heavy walker, and besides even that, he whistled and sang and talked to himself, and this morning the silence lay undisturbed.

Timothy abandoned his plans. Settling the heap of books down on the sideboard, he trailed into the back rooms of the house. "Mr. Davies? Sir?"

All this to no answer. His own footfalls were so loud in the silence that he felt clumsy, iron-shod. He stepped around the corner into the parlor. "Mr. Davies?"

When he saw the shape on the floor, he understood at once that he could call and call and never receive an answer—this was no sleep, or drunkenness, or even injury. The whole back of Davies's head—pink-scalped, formerly, under its wispy and golden remaining strands of hair—was gone. It exposed a great clot of blood and splintered bone to the air. His hands—empty and bare—lay at his sides, palms open, unwounded, beseeching. Beautiful things. He'd said that Timothy made beautiful things. Timothy stepped forward, meaning only to whisk the tablecloth from its place and cover Davies sow that he would not lie so naked to whatever passerby might come, but when he got closer, he saw a heavy-bodied black fly crawl across the ruin of Mr. Davies's skull and begin cleaning his legs, as if scraping off the dried blood so he did not track it home, and Timothy turned and vomited onto the easy-chair.

()

"And you say that you saw nothing, heard nothing?"

Timothy ran his tongue over his teeth. God, the taste was foul. He had rinsed and rinsed and still it stayed stubbornly there, a reminder of his cowardice. "I was asleep." He'd said it twice before already. Whatever the policeman wanted—a spontaneous confession from him, perhaps—he would not get it, no matter how slinking Timothy felt at the moment. "I came home quite late last night—nine, I should think—and we talked." _I gave him a clock, a worthless and dangerous present, but he admired it nonetheless, though it spouted off bursts of steam and lagged three minutes of every hour. _"And I went straight up to bed and did not come down until this morning, when I found him so and sent for you."

"Why home so late last night?"

"I had hopes of selling a clock I'd made. Things did not go as planned."

"You're a clockmaker?"

"Among other things." _At which I have failed. _"I'm an engineer, of sorts—I design things, make them. Clocks, for example, steam-powered ones."

"What's wrong with old-fashioned clockwork?"

"Nothing, as it turns out, and also it doesn't scald you, which is why my evening did not align with my hopes." Driven to it, he glanced off to the side, where Mr. Davies most likely would have settled the clock—something pretty for the parlor—upon the table, with—oh, a part of—his collection of trumpery.

It was not there.

Timothy blinked at its absence.

The policeman said, "So if nobody's buying what you sell, how is that you pay your rent?"

"I had a little money saved up before," Timothy said, somewhat absentminded now. Where was the clock? Where had Davies put it? There was even a hole in the bric-a-brac upon the table, a gap like a missing tooth in a smile. "And I depended much upon Mr. Davies's kindness, which was ample. He was convinced that one day I would—make my fortune here. I only lacked the right opportunity, he said, and soon it would come with the rain one morning, and then wouldn't he be sorry if he had turned me out onto the streets? He's a very—was a very—goodhearted man."

As far as he could tell, the policeman had stopped listening to him once he'd mentioned having had some money to his name that was independent of work—he had been searching for either an alibi or a motivation, but if Timothy were a bit of a gentleman, with family somewhere or another, that gave him the former and relieved him of the latter. Young gentleman do not beat in their landlord's skulls over a few paltry month's rent.

"Something happened here that is more complex than you are thinking," Timothy said desperately. "Mr. Davies had no enemies, not a one—I lived in his house for months and never heard a word against him or saw a scowl in his direction."

"Robbery, sir," the policeman said, "does not require enemies as such, only men—the robbers, like, now, is what I mean—unwilling to call a man a friend."

"But nothing is missing!" _Except the clock, maybe—but who would take that off under his arm?_

"So it went awry, as such things often do. Your Mr. Davies made a fuss and they silenced him, quick as Jack-be-nimble, and then feared the blood, or your waking, and headed straight out again." The policeman gave a brief nod towards the white-sheeted body on the floor. Timothy wondered if there were still flies on it, crawling sluggishly in the dark under that thin curtain. His gorge rose again in his throat and he turned away quickly, his hand to his mouth. This confirmed for the policeman, if nothing else had, that he numbered among or at least near the quality—such sensitivity to a bad smell, to a bad thought, to a bad dream.

_I did have a bad dream. The sounds of things falling—of the blows?_

"There, sir," the policeman said. "Simple as you like."

Anything was simple if it could be made up almost whole-cloth. Timothy could do so easily himself. Let him do the policeman up a sketch of things that never were and never could be—flying machines, things that dove to the depths of the sea, things that crawled upon the ground like spiders with metal legs—and all of them would be more vivid and more convincing, and far easier to draw, than the interior wheels and pipes and pistons and hammers of clocks or revolvers or anything else real to the touch. Oh, let it go, let it go, the man meant not to help him, not to help Davies, and if he pushed, he would only undoubtedly find himself being led away and taken up to Law.

"Simple," Timothy said.

The policeman took it for agreement.

()

That night, after they had led the body away on a wagon and he had scoured the house in vain for the missing clock, Timothy bent over his worktable and made, as quickly and best as he could, the few things of his production that would sell: the folding metal blades and loops of chain and bits of danger that had earned him some money and notoriety in a less reputable area of London. He had no intention tonight, however, of trading these unpleasant little toys for money towards his passage home. What he wanted, instead, was information.

Weighed down, his pockets clanking and clanging with the snips and snaps, he made his way down to the slapped-up and shoddy institutions that bordered the Thames. He was well-enough known there now to pass without comment—he was selling these toys to half the men who might otherwise wish him harm, and the other half kept still out of a superstitious fear of the toys themselves—he had, by now, a reputation as a bit of an eccentric, having scalded or pinched or otherwise damaged such a good percentage of his customers, and peddled weapons else for the damage of others, and who knew, after all, what he might have in his pockets or up his sleeve? The truth of it was that the toys did not work half so well as the men imagined, which was why he felt little unease about selling them: they were pretty things, but cumbersome and unreliable, the steam-powered clock's hand-sized and black sheep companions. But this fear kept everyone at bay as he headed to the Green Parrot.

There had never been a parrot inside the tavern, let alone a green one, and Timothy never had puzzled out the name from anyone, as they were unfailingly already too far gone to find the matter of any interest.

He scanned the room. The least drunk appeared to be Smith and Stebbins, constant companions to each other, and invaluable men. They had never bought any of the toys, not being in any particular black-hearted trade themselves, but they were always gleefully acquainted with men who had, and they had a particular fondness for Timothy as something new and bizarre—a green parrot—that had come into their midst. And they knew, always, the business of everyone in the city.

"Mr. McGee!" Stebbins called. "Come, come, buy you a drink."

"I'll buy," Timothy said. He had enough money for that at least. "I have news to tell you and a favor to ask you and I would think both would go down better with something warm."

"Mr. Davies dead, is what he wants to tell us," Smith said.

Stebbins nodded. "Aye, Mr. Davies dead, and it's a misfortune, Mr. McGee, but not news."

"Not to us, at any rate."

"For we've known it, most like, before you did."

"I shouldn't think that possible, in this case," Timothy said. "I nearly stumbled over him this morning."

"Well," Smith said, "we have ways and ways, young Mr. McGee. But a favor, well—"

"That's something new."

Timothy relayed to the potboy what he knew by now to be the standard drink order for Smith and Stebbins—a gin and a brandy—and nothing for himself. "I am glad to be able to surprise you in something, at least," he said, once they were alone again—or as alone as anyone ever got in the Green Parrot, where the tables and chairs were jammed so much together that every word you said tumbled into the ears of at least a dozen. "Though I should ask, first, if you know anything at all about Mr. Davies's murder?"

Smith and Stebbins traded a quick glance.

"Robbery, is what we heard," Smith said.

"Though you and I and him and everyone else knows that most likely isn't so."

"True," Timothy said. "I was wondering if you had something bordering more on the believable."

"No one's laid claim to it," Stebbins said. "But most likely they wouldn't, Davies being well liked as he was, and the body still fresh and the reward notices still hot from the presses."

"Or not yet run off, even."

"Or not yet run off," Stebbins agreed. "But to ask if we knew about Mr. Davies, and who done him in, is not what you came to ask, Mr. McGee, or else you've misjudged us, because to give you the story of a good man's death is not a favor to ask from a friend, but something to be expected."

The drinks came in their dirty glasses. Smith and Stebbins clicked them together in memory of Mr. Davies, and waited for Timothy to make his request.

"The police," Timothy said, "are little interested in the matter, convinced as they are that it's a matter of robbery, as you said. They will post about the rewards and then they will wash their hands of him. I do not feel that I can do the same."

"Talking," Smith observed, "and saying true things, but not yet asking his favor."

"I do not know how to say it, exactly."

He wished for a drink himself. What was he getting himself into? Smith and Stebbins were good, if unscrupulous, men, but he was sure that the question he would ask next would open his door to men less scrupulous and far less good. He had no money. What he ought, sensibly, to do was to thank Smith and Stebbins for their consolations and go straight back to Davies's to gather his things, and from there, straight away to home, without ever stopping to sleep in a dead man's house, let alone mire himself in a dead man's affairs. But Mr. Davies had been very kind to him, and the clock was missing, and Timothy could not abandon this obligation to him so easily as all that.

"I wanted to know," he said, "if you were acquainted with anyone who might be persuaded to take up the matter the police have neglected. The investigation of Mr. Davies's murder. Someone who would work for little or nothing, or at least take my word as bond that I would pay it back. Or else—" And here, he thought, he opened himself up far wider than was advisable. "Or else someone who would take my work as pay." He reached into his pocket and drew out a handful of trinkets. "Someone interested in these, or better things, perhaps—as many as I could make, even, if only they would expend some care in Mr. Davies's direction." Yes, and he would arm such dangerous men, if they asked it, with contraptions loaded with more force than the spindly toys could bear—he understood well enough how it could be done, and simply avoided it, having protection enough on his walks from the flimsies without peddling real death to those would use it cavalierly. Yet now he made the decision, and he could not yet tell if it infringed upon or imperiled his soul.

"Take it up, and for either your thanks, your bond, or something better than those shiny things?"

"They fall apart a bit, with wear," Timothy admitted. "These do, I mean."

"Well, that's known," Stebbins said. "They're bought nonetheless."

"People like the look of them."

"And you charge so reasonably."

"Doesn't know his customers."

"Or knows them all too well—go to high for something pretty, something maybe-deadly rather than sure-deadly, and maybe they'll slit his throat for him."

"Though maybe not," Smith said. "For every now and then he does have a bit of something with more scare to it than pretty."

"So he does."

"We heard rumors of a clock."

"I might have known," Timothy said. "The clock is not for sale. But gentlemen—the question?"

They looked at each other. Smith swirled the last bits of his gin around in the glass.

"Well," Stebbins said, "if you have such a problem as you do, with so little as you've got, then what you're letting yourself in for is nothing but trouble, safe to say, but yes, we do know as to how you might get a bit of help, though pointing it to you is not so much of a favor as you might like."

"I will take my chances."

Smith shrugged. "Well, you're a good lad, and it's none of our concern, not really, but we might say that you should rethink, like."

"I have made up my mind." Though not his stomach, as it was beginning to roil uneasily within him. Smith had washed his hands—their hands, perhaps—of him just now, had he not? None of their concern. Whoever he was being referred to, then, was someone to be feared, if he made Smith and Stebbins—always cavalier, always assured—so anxious.

"Then there's only one thing for it," Stebbins said, "though it's a shame."

"But," Smith said, "you'll have to talk to Mr. Gibbs."


	2. Chapter II

**Chapter II**

"Who is Mr. Gibbs?"

Stebbins shrugged and gulped down the rest of his brandy. "A hard man."

"A dangerous man."

"A good man, maybe. We're not the like who could say. But he's a gentleman—a sort of gentleman, at any rate, as I've heard as to how there're squabbles about how much his blood's been scrubbed by the quality—and he's interested in what you might call _unusual problems_, like the one you've got as to how to get something for nothing, in London of all places."

Timothy began, almost despite himself, to feel more at ease. If Mr. Gibbs were a gentleman—even a sort of gentleman—then a certain type of behavior would be naturally expected from him. He could be rude, but he would not be violent, and could not possibly be as dangerous as Smith and Stebbins thought. For the first time since he had seen the fly crawling through the ruin, he had hope.

"And where can I find Mr. Gibbs?"

Smith and Stebbins traded a glance. Timothy was very familiar with it. It was the look people had when he told them about steam-powered clockwork—he had just said something irredeemably stupid.

"Never would you do that," Smith said slowly, "without which first you found Mr. Anthony."

"Mr. Gibbs being a bit out of reach, like."

"Hard to imagine making a call on him, that's true," Smith agreed.

Timothy felt as if he might possibly want to write all of this down; he had not ever imagined that it would be so complicated. "Anthony is his surname?"

"That's the thing."

"Doesn't have one."

Stebbins leaned forward confidentially. "He's somebody's son, from somewhere, is what everybody knows, and he acts like a lord, but not quite, and all anybody knows is that he came up years ago and ended up neat in Mr. Gibbs's pocket, quick as you please."

"And what you want, if what you want is business, is to find Mr. Anthony first, being as how he lies like a dog at Mr. Gibbs's door. But you ought to be careful, Mr. McGee, for he's not what you'd call right in the head, not as such."

"Not that he wouldn't help you," Stebbins said. "Well, not that we know, but he may. For he's trouble, and he's touched, but Mr. Davies being murdered, that's a confusion, and Mr. Anthony, he does hate things that don't make sense."

"Must drive himself mad," Smith said, and sniggered.

Two dangerous men—one hard, one mad, and of course of the two of them he would have to approach the _mad_ one first, hat in hand, to ask for help. The hope he'd felt a moment ago had drained out of him and even his bedrock certainty that he must find someone to help him find what had happened with Mr. Davies was cracking in his chest. He was tired, and he was poor, and he wanted very badly to go home.

"Very well," he said. "Where can I find Mr. Anthony?"

Smith looked at Stebbins, who looked back at Smith. They said in unison:

"The theatre."

()

The play in question that night was something called _The Fox_ and Timothy, standing outside as its attendees filed in, felt distinctly grubby and unmentionable in comparison. He endeavored to straighten his cravat and kept looking down his chin to judge its angle, which he was certain he did badly, and probably the damned things was more askew after he'd finished than before he started. He could not go in without a ticket, and they were priced to make his insides quiver, so his only solution was to halt Mr. Anthony before he passed the threshold. The problem with that, he quickly realized—outside of the sheer rudeness of the thing—was that he had not the slightest idea what Mr. Anthony looked like. He begged the ticket-taker's attention.

"Excuse me, but do you happen to know a Mr. Anthony?"

"Oh," the boy said. "_Him_. He's been here for a bit already."

"But I need most desperately to talk to him."

"Well," the boy said, "then you buy a ticket."

"I haven't any money."

"We've no seats left anyway," the boy said smugly. "And your cravat is crooked."

Timothy fiddled with it again but, judging by the boy's continued smirk, only made the problem still worse. "If you've no seats, why did you offer to sell me a ticket?"

The boy shrugged. "You wouldn't have known there were no seats until you were inside, would you? Thank you, lady. Gentleman," he added, as he accepted a pair of tickets from a well-dressed couple who regarded Timothy's sooty clothing with an audible sniff.

Tim reigned in his anger. "If I cannot go in," he said, "can you, at least, and take a message for me?"

"Not if you've no money."

He found his hand in his pocket before he understood what he was doing well enough to stop himself. "I do have this, though." Fortunately, what he pulled out was the toy least dangerous and most easily broken—a spindly-legged thing that attached to the fingers like a glove and was supposed to allow one to catch hold of someone more firmly and more sharply as well. It did nothing of the sort. But it was sleek, and it clicked amiably enough at its joints, and the boy seemed entranced with it the moment it was out of the pocket.

He did not even ask what it was. "If you give me that, I'll run you in a message to Mr. Anthony."

Timothy withdrew the toy. "After," he said. "You'll forgive me for not trusting someone willing only moments ago to defraud me for my ticket money."

The boy scowled. "After, then. What's the word I ought to pass?"

Timothy considered it. There seemed to be no easy way to express, in a whispered theatre conversation, all that he needed the elusive and almost certainly mad Mr. Anthony to know—he could not put the boy's mouth to Mr. Anthony's ear and have him spool out the whole long story of Mr. Davies, the nonsensical clock, the body, the fly, the police, and Timothy's own empty—but for the toys—pockets. He needed something short and quick and guaranteed to draw Mr. Anthony's attention. "Tell him," he said, "that it's about Mr. Gibbs." If Mr. Anthony truly hated a mystery, that would send him outside, if only for the rest of the story.

The boy raised his eyebrows. "Oh, so it's to do with _him_, is it? I might have known. Give me a bit," and he disappeared into the theatre, leaving the next few attendees to look about in bewilderment, scoff at the state of the world, and leave their tickets in the mire on the cobblestones in lieu of the boy's scrupulously cleaned hand.

Timothy felt as if he ought to pick them up, but wasn't at all sure he wanted to be sniffed over any further, and if he began grubbing around in the muck instead of at least standing straight and waiting patiently, as a gentleman might, he was sure he would attract even more unwelcome attention. Nevertheless, in the absence of the boy on his errand, he did feel a sense of responsibility—

The doors of the theatre banged open against the brick.

A man strode out in a flurry of rich black fabric, his white cravat and gloves gleaming waxily in the light at his throat and hands. He certainly did look mad, although not like a man who so conspicuously lacked a name. He spotted Timothy and rushed towards him, his mouth a tight and unmistakably tense line.

"What is it? What's happened?"

"You're Mr. Anthony?"

"Do you think it likely that I'm not, to come storming out like this after your message? What's happened to him?"

"Oh," Timothy said. He had the sinking feeling that he had already bungled things fairly badly. He rallied himself. "Nothing has happened to Mr. Gibbs, inasmuch as I'm aware. I'm here to ask your help—yours and Mr. Gibbs's—with a matter of great interest and importance."

Mr. Anthony stared at him. "Do you not understand," he said slowly, "that I am, at the moment, otherwise engaged? For God's sake, I thought that—"

"My apologies, sir," Timothy said. "It was never my intention to put you under a false assumption." _Why_, he wondered, _am I talking like this? _He tried to untangle his tongue so that he would sound even a little more like himself. "I need your help most desperately, and I was told to seek you out here so that you might persuade Mr. Gibbs to give me his attention, and that you—"

"Are you _dying_?"

This really was not going at all as he had planned. "No," Timothy said weakly.

"About to die? Being followed by someone with a revolver or a knife or something quite heavy?"

"No, it's not like that, it's my landlord—"

"I am at," Mr. Anthony said, "the _theatre_. And have you any idea how long I've waited for—oh God, the lights are out in there, it's starting. Well, come out with it, at least. Your landlord's _what_?"

"Dead. Murdered." Timothy struggled for what he wanted to say. "The back of his head was beaten in. There was just nothing—he was—"

Mr. Anthony scowled, patted his pockets briefly, and came up with a pocket handkerchief. It was not as lush as the rest of his clothes—somewhat worn, but very clean, and of good quality. Timothy, his face hot, feeling the full weight of the body in the parlor and the tickets in the mire and the books that he would have to sell, turned away slightly as he used it.

"My condolences," Mr. Anthony said once he turned back, and for the first time since he had rushed outside like a storm, his voice was level. "The police—"

"They believe that it's a robbery," Timothy said, "with Mr. Davies surprising them at it, and so nothing taken except the clock." He crushed the handkerchief in his fist. "Though they did not notice the clock, and I said nothing, because—"

"A _clock_? They took a _clock_? That's a damnably heavy thing to move."

"No," Timothy said, "not this. It was small, for the table. A steam-powered clock."

Mr. Anthony was the first person who did not react to this with complete and utter scorn, which seemed strange: instead he simply raised his eyebrows and continued.

"You doubt the robbery," he said, and glanced back in through the crack of the theatre doors, behind which they could both hear the murmurs of the actors and the responding laughs and gasps of the audience. He would shake Timothy off soon enough—only the necessity of lending the handkerchief had made his course waver—and soon, Timothy knew, he would be settling back down again in his seat, comfortable once more in his nameless life, cursing Timothy for having interrupted him with something so incredibly trivial.

"The robbery," Timothy said flatly, "is not possible. Not with the clock being all that was missing and not with Mr. Davies's being so well-liked, even among those of ill-repute. It cannot be what happened, but even if it were so, they have considered nothing else, and simply dismissed those things which go against their theory. It is bad logic."

Mr. Anthony looked him over. "I would agree with you in that, at least. Your name, sir?"

"Timothy McGee."

"Well, Mr. McGee, I will be sure to discuss your case with my employer." He did not quite sound as if he were lying, but that sideways glance at the theatre doors suggested that his sincerity at the moment mattered less to him than the prospect of returning inside. He could still forget.

Timothy, disgusted, wondered how it was possible for anyone to go through their life in this way, able to brush off a dead man—and a good man, at that—simply in order to return to one's engagement.

"If you will excuse me—"

"I will not excuse you!" He thought of amending his latest letter home, still resting on the desk in his room: _Dearest Mother and Father, since coming to London, I have sold weapons to children and to very bad men, and seen a man's brains, and screamed at a gentleman in the streets. The city is all I hoped for and more_.

Mr. Anthony stood very still in the semi-darkness. Inside the theatre, there was a roar of applause, but this time Mr. Anthony seemed not to notice it. Suddenly, Timothy remembered what Smith and Stebbins had told him—that Mr. Anthony was trouble, and touched in the head besides. But they had also said that he cared about the puzzles of things, and could not abide confusion, and so Timothy tried to make his thoughts cohere well enough—and to ignore as much as he could the danger implicit in that pause, that deafness to the crowd inside—to describe the true and terrible strangeness of what had been done to Mr. Davies.

"I apologize," Timothy said, trying now, too late, to be cautious, "but I merely believe—"

"No," Mr. Anthony said stiffly. "I am the one who ought to apologize."

Though saying that, Timothy noted, was still a fine line away from actually apologizing.

"I have been—neglectful of my profession," Mr. Anthony said. He made a face, as if the words tasted bitter in his mouth. "And that is something I had hoped never to be. Although, really, the rudeness of interrupting—but that is not what matters. If you need my help, sir, you shall have it—and I sincerely hope that I have not caused you to no longer desire it."

Then the effect of it all was spoiled as he glanced ruefully back at the doors and said, "Although you might just decide to not desire it now, but perhaps again in a few hours?"

Timothy sighed.

"_Months_," Mr. Anthony said, "_months_ have I had that engagement, curse you," but he took off walking, and not back into the theatre, and after he had made it a few paces in front of Timothy, he turned around and spread his arms out. "Are you coming or are you staying? It seems quite unfair to drive me from a place you seem unwilling to leave yourself!"

"I am with you, sir," Timothy said. He caught up quickly. "Where are we going? Mr. Davies's body—"

"Was undoubtedly taken away already, and it is, as you may have noticed, very late in the evening. The time of a theatrical production, one might observe. The body will be unattended for hours yet, we can defile it with our attentions at some later time. No, Mr. McGee, we are going to consult with my employer, who fortunately can never be interrupted, as he in general cannot be surprised and in specific is never doing anything so interesting he cannot stand to put it aside. You may observe that he is not in my company tonight."

He flagged down a cab at the corner and paused briefly to stroke one of the horse's noses before he addressed himself to the driver, who recognized him at once.

"Mr. Anthony! Aren't you meant to be at the theatre tonight?"

Mr. Anthony, his voice thin and steely, said, "Apparently I am not. Home, please—and we'll be taking this gentleman with us." Having been freshly reminded of the theatre, he addressed Timothy as if Timothy were something stuck to the bottom of his boot. Timothy endeavored not to mind: as long as they went, and found Mr. Gibbs, though, Mr. Anthony could say whatever he liked.

With them both settled into the cab, Mr. Anthony turned to him with a bright and entirely alarming smile and said, "Now, when you meet my employer—best to avoid any sudden movements."


	3. Chapter III

**Chapter III**

After he had offered his warning, Mr. Anthony ignored Timothy throughout their ride, his eyes closed and his head slumped against the cab's wall as if he were asleep. But when the cab pulled to a halt, he sprang instantly awake, paid the driver, and hauled Timothy out like so much baggage.

"Home," Mr. Anthony said. It was one of two times the whole night, Timothy thought, that he had sounded almost human. "Come on, Mr. McGee."

The house was an ugly one of discolored brick, and would have been hideous and harsh to the eye in any other venue, but somehow here was not—and it was, at least, very clean, the bricks having been freshly scrubbed and divested of the normal London coating of soot. Mr. Anthony let himself in—he did not knock, and no one came to collect him at the door—and led Timothy through the house. It was furnished sparsely but well, all the present items of good quality and entrancing solidity, and there was a jumbled of assorted non-furnishings—collections, papers, pictures—arranged in homey-little notches and shelves about the rooms. But all of this he had to notice as swiftly as possible, because Mr. Anthony did not break off his pace only so that Timothy could gawk.

"No servants?"

"We have a bit of trouble keeping them," Mr. Anthony said. "We have a cook and a housemaid—Mrs. Anderson and Miss Fleming—but they are both native Londoners, and both prefer to keep their nights at home, so we raise their pay for food and rent. But aside from them, we've no one."

He looked at the lush fabric of Mr. Anthony's sleeve, at the perfectly knotted cravat. "Not a manservant?"

Mr. Anthony touched the knot at his neck, as if drawn there by Timothy's eyes. "I was—without one, for a time, when I was younger. I've lost the habit of having people—well, I prefer to attend to my own needs. And my employer has always been a rather self-sufficient man, though one who cannot tie a straight cravat, and so that I do for him myself. You are very inquisitive, Mr. McGee."

"We are at the beginning of an investigation, sir."

"I hope not into _me_," Mr. Anthony said. "For there is nothing at all of any interest." He paused in front of a door and looked Timothy over. Timothy tried to straighten his cravat again, but Mr. Anthony knocked his hands aside. "No, leave it crooked. It promotes your general air of earnestness. And the rest of you is presentable enough—for our work, at least. And so inside."

He swung the door open and, without waiting for Timothy, headed straight in.

Timothy sighed, gathered his courage—Mr. Gibbs was a gentleman and so _would _be a gentleman, not at all as alarming as the nameless Mr. Anthony—and followed.

There was a strong-faced silver-haired man sitting in one of the two chairs pulled close to the fire. He was whittling something, but he put it aside as Mr. Anthony approached. "Thought you were at the theatre, Anthony."

Good God. Were they going to have this from everyone they met?

But Mr. Anthony was, to Timothy's infinite surprise, polite. "I was, sir, but I was found by Mr. McGee here on what is, he tells me, a matter of some importance and urgency."

"Well, finding you is never the hard part," Mr. Gibbs said, still not looking over at Timothy. "That'd be getting you out the door while you can still smell the greasepaint."

Mr. Anthony lowered his head slightly but did not answer. Mr. Gibbs frowned and then nodded, directing his attention towards Timothy.

Timothy would almost rather he hadn't—the full force of that gaze was nothing that anyone would want. Mr. Gibbs's eyes pierced him to the bone. He tried very hard to follow Mr. Anthony's advice and not make any sudden movements.

"You're the Mr. McGee who peddles those—_contraptions_?"

There were many contraptions in London, and possibly many Mr. McGees also, but the way Mr. Gibbs emphasized "contraptions" made him think that this had to correctly mean him. "Yes, sir. But this matter concerns my landlord, Mr. Davies, who is—"

"Dead," Mr. Gibbs said. "We knew that already."

"_You _knew?" Timothy asked, turning towards Anthony.

"I knew he was _dead_, Mr. McGee, but I did not know that he had an unusually persistent tenant who cared so much for justice in his name." That sounded almost like a compliment. "We do not run after every body taken away in a cart, trailing it like dogs on a scent—in London, we scarcely have the time. We are _consultants_ for when all else has failed."

"All else has failed very quickly in your case, it seems," Mr. Gibbs said.

"The police are dismissing the case."

"As robbery," Mr. Gibbs agreed. "And you do not feel that they have been thorough?"

"They have not had the time to be thorough, sir. His body most likely was not even cold when they took it off and washed their hands of it." He could not read Mr. Gibbs's expression at all. He steadied himself and clasped his hands behind his back, the way his schoolmaster had always taught him to present himself before beginning a speech. "Sir, I have nothing to give you in payment but my word. London has been a sad failure for me, and I for it, but I assure you, if you take up my case, I will pay you for it as soon as I can. Mr. Davies was the very best of men, and he deserved a better end. If he could not have that, then he deserves, at least, the reparation of our attentions, and I will do what it takes to secure that."

He fell silent.

"Calm down, Mr. McGee," Mr. Gibbs said. "We have already accepted your case. There's no need for dramatics, though Anthony may find them comforting."

Mr. Anthony scowled, but did not seem surprised by Mr. Gibbs's pronouncement. "I was thinking, sir," he said, addressing himself to Mr. Gibbs, "that perhaps we might examine the house in question before we awaken the good doctor. Mr. McGee tells me there is a missing clock."

Mr. Gibbs frowned. "A _clock_?"

"Steam-powered," Timothy put in.

"Why the devil would anyone want a steam-powered clock?"

"They don't, evidently," Timothy said.

"Clearly someone thinks otherwise," Mr. Anthony said, sensibly enough, "or else they would have stolen more mundane clockwork, if they were simply in need of the time. –Sir, may I have a moment of your time before our departure?"

Mr. Gibbs nodded. "Mr. McGee, would you step out into the hall?"

No _please_, Timothy thought, no _I beg you_—but at least they had taken his case, though he was sure now that neither of them were gentlemen, strange and abrupt as they were, living in their house with no servants and keeping a good mental record of all the suspicious deaths in London. Nonetheless, the house was nice enough, and he walked on down the hall and stopped to examine a very well-done but very small painting of a ship at sea. To his surprise, he found that just behind the painted waves, he could hear Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Anthony.

He ought to have walked further down the hall—their voices were low, intimate, it was not a conversation he was meant to hear, and the avoiding of it was why they had sent him into the hall to begin with. But he was tired, and curious, and they were so harsh and strange, Mr. Anthony so mad and Mr. Gibbs so curt, that he stepped even closer to the wall and turned his ear towards it—though he did not go so far as to press it flush against the paper.

"I believe it would be best if you would handle the situation alone," Mr. Anthony was saying.

Mr. Gibbs's voice sounded different, now—mellower. "Because you're missing your play, Anthony?"

"They would scarcely let me in now, and in any case, the joy has gone out of the thing."

"I'm sorry for that."

"You should not be. I meant to tell you that I have not been the man I ought to be, tonight. I fear you—ah. I fear I have been an embarrassment to you, and it can hardly have brought Mr. McGee to instill his full faith and confidence in us."

"You did things badly?"

Silence—Mr. Anthony nodding, perhaps.

"Then do them better," Mr. Gibbs said.

"Yes, sir."

There was a long silence, enough for Timothy to wonder what was happening now, when suddenly the doors of the room opened up. Timothy hurled himself back from the wall.

"I was only examining a painting!" he called down the length of the hallway.

Mr. Anthony's face indicated that he was beginning to suspect that he was not the only one in this company who was a trifle touched in the head. "Come on, Mr. McGee. If we're to investigate your landlord's house and interfere with his mortal remains all before dawn, we must move swiftly and not pause to—examine paintings. We'll take our cab. You aren't prone to sickness by any chance, are you? From being jolted about?"

"Not that I know of."

"Good," Mr. Anthony said grimly. "Because, as I told you, we are perennially lacking in help, which does mean that my employer will be the one at the reins. And many people find this, shall we say—less than pleasant."

()

Death was imminent.

Timothy had never realized this before, but he understood it perfectly now—sooner or later, every man and woman on God's earth met their end. Sometimes swiftly, sometimes slowly, but always eventually. The mill ground slow but exceedingly fine, and not even the best escaped from it turning wheels and its unbearable pressure. Soon, for all of them, there would be nothing but black flies, clots of blood, and the rich, rotting smell of old flesh. The air would go stale, and the lights would go out, and everything would turn, eventually, to dust.

He tried to express these things to Mr. Anthony, who merely smiled and patted his shoulder.

"Don't worry, Mr. McGee," he said. "He won't kill you, it just seems that way."

Timothy's stomach lurched forward again as they took a turn around the corner all too sharply.

"You lie, sir."

"I'm in here myself," Mr. Anthony pointed out, though even he looked a trifle green around the edges. "And you're doing better than most, who would likely have fled screaming into the night by now, the remains of their afternoon teas splattered across the pavement." At saying it, he turned still greener and swiped at his face with his handkerchief. "He really does not understand how hard it is for other people." He knocked hard against the wood of the cab. "Sir, we are going to lose our client, and you are going to lose your assistant, and then we will have no business, and I will be dead besides, and shan't be at all sorry for you."

There was a low, vaguely amused retort to this which Timothy, concentrating on keeping this morning's bread and cheese safely inside himself, could not hear—but the cab did slow down enough to make him feel as if living were at least possible, if still not entirely likely.

Mr. Anthony leaned back again and settled down once more into his seat.

Timothy wondered if he ought to thank Mr. Anthony for his part in taking the case. He decided that Mr. Anthony did not look at all as if he wanted to be thanked by him, and in fact looked somewhat like a drowsing lion that might turn vicious if roused. Timothy therefore concentrated on the pressing issue of how to avoid death in a cabriolet driven by Mr. Gibbs. He had just decided that the only clear solution was to cling desperately to the window frame in hopes of not being jolted straight into Mr. Anthony—who would probably not thank Timothy for tumbling into his lap—when the cab came to a halt so quickly that he feared that horses' legs must have splintered underneath them.

He climbed out and stood very carefully on the nicely flat pavement, as if recovering from seasickness. Mr. Anthony went up and fed bits of sugar and apple to the horses. In response to Timothy's look, he said, "I bribe them not to let him drive them hard enough to be the death of me—and them, for that matter." He stroked one velvety nose, and then another. "I can't say that they understand, but as long as they keep up their end of the bargain, I will keep up mine. Here, and you can try it yourself."

Timothy had never before endeavored to make an agreement with a horse, but his brief trip in Mr. Gibbs's cab had made him superstitious and likely to clutch at any possible assurance, so he went forward, took two slivers of apple, and fed them to the horses.

"There," Mr. Anthony said. "And now they will do their best for you, poor things." He looked to Mr. Gibbs. "They're hot already, and it could have been such a reasonable trip, I really do wish you would consider them. It's a shame to treat good animals like this."

"I treat them well," Mr. Gibbs said, in the tone of someone who has had this conversation a dozen times before and is by now quite tired of it. "But when they must work, they must work, and quickly, or else tonight we would be short on time, and our work would suffer."

Mr. Anthony sighed. "Good girls," he said to the horses. "Good girls." His consolation.

They went inside. Timothy slid his key into the lock as prickles went up and down his neck. He half-thought, as they rounded into the parlor, that he would see Mr. Davies's body still on the floor, or the shape of it outlined in buzzing flies, a portrait of Gehenna—but there was nothing there but the faded brown rosette of dried blood on the carpet.

Timothy braced himself against a cabinet.

"We do need you," Mr. Anthony said.

"We never had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Davies," Mr. Gibbs said. "You would know if things are where they should be—or aren't."

Timothy steadied himself. "There is the missing clock. I gave it to him last night. It ought to be… _there_." He raised his hand automatically to point to the gap, but found himself indicating, instead, a perfectly acceptable and non-steam-powered clock. It was a neat, fairly expensive little item made of gold and glass.

"I take it that's not your clock," Mr. Gibbs said dryly.

"No, sir," he said, staring at it. "Mine is three minutes slower, and also gives off spurts of steam."

"Then this is demonstrably not the same clock," Mr. Anthony said. "So where is yours?"

"More than that," Timothy said, "where did this clock come from? It does not belong to the house, this if nicer than Mr. Davies's could have afforded, prone as he was to charity cases, such as myself."

"Were you dependent upon him, Mr. McGee? It may make a difference, I do not ask only for the sake of knowing."

He believed that from Mr. Gibbs as he would not have believed it from Mr. Anthony. "I came to London with a little money, sir, which ran out through my hands as quick as water—the first month's rent was the most sensible of the expenditures, the materials for things like the clock the least. Without Mr. Davies's kindness, I would have found myself home again not long after I left, but even with it—I was planning soon on leaving London."

"Which is why you were going to sell your books," Mr. Anthony said. "Not the most sensible of your purchases, but not the least, and the one you did not mention because to you, they were already gone." He nodded to the heap of books on the table, which was just visible from their place in the parlor—had he noticed it there, or while they were still in the hall? Either way, he had had little time to see them and little knowledge to put the pieces together, but had done it nonetheless—mad or not, he was sharp enough to cut.

Timothy nodded. "They would bring a little money. I hoped to use them to repay Mr. Davies as I could—and as he would take the funds—but I fear now the sum of their earnings will go entirely towards your pay—or my passage home."

"Well," Mr. Anthony said, "you mustn't leave us quite yet, Mr. McGee. We have a clock that should be here but is not, and a clock that should not be here but is. That's quite enough to begin with, but it does not make for much of an ending, so having begun together, we must all end thus, as well."


	4. Chapter IV

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Happy birthday to letsplaypretend! Also, I think from now on, we'll do a chapter a day instead of every other day, if that's okay with everyone—the whole story's finished, anyway. Thanks to everyone for the feedback, and I hope you enjoy the rest of it!

()

**Chapter IV**

Room by room, they went slowly and patiently through the house, but there was nothing else that Timothy could say was missing or left behind. With two rooms remaining, Mr. Gibbs nodded at Mr. Anthony; Mr. Anthony bowed slightly and slipped out of the room and, judging by the sound from downstairs, the house. Without a word to Timothy, Mr. Gibbs simply ushered him into the next room, and then the next, all to no avail.

Being left alone in Mr. Gibbs's company made Timothy a trifle uneasy. Mr. Gibbs had not been the gentleman for whom he had hoped, although he was willing to concede that perhaps he would be even more effective than Timothy had imagined in uprooting the whys and wherefores of Mr. Davies's murder, but nonetheless, the support and quiet politeness that he had thought to count on in his agent in this matter was very much not in evidence. And having to have two disreputable men attached to his presence and his name, he preferred Mr. Anthony for familiarity's sake, and was therefore surprised and slightly disappointed to have been abandoned already into the lone clutches of this man whom he barely knew but of whom he was already a little afraid.

Though he did, somewhat to his surprise, trust Mr. Gibbs—though as of yet he felt no liking for him.

"Where have you sent Mr. Anthony?"

"Where we will be going soon," Mr. Gibbs said.

Well, certainly _that _removed the situation's ambiguity. "But in a more precise location?"

Mr. Gibbs's boot heels knocked firmly against the stairs as he trod down them without looking back at Timothy. "He went to fetch the doctor, who will meet us to examine the body." He sounded as if explaining himself were a great and almost insurmountable effort. Perhaps he had taken on Mr. Anthony as an assistant because Mr. Anthony talked enough for the pair of them.

"We are allowed to examine the body?" He checked the time by ducking his head into the parlor and examining the mysterious new clock, then returned and revised his statement. "We will be able to see the body at this time of the night?"

"Oh yes," Mr. Gibbs said, "quite able."

Timothy frowned. "There will be someone there now to let us in? Who would they leave for such an unwelcome task?"

"No one," Mr. Gibbs said, "which is why we will be quite able to let ourselves inside."

"But it will be—it will be breaking the law."

"It will be breaking the door, or the lock," Mr. Gibbs said, "though yes, the law with it." He looked at Timothy with a hard, unreadable expression. "The reason you wanted us was that the law had failed you. If you would now prefer to return your alliance to it, you of course may, though your patron will continue to be dead and the law will continue to be uninterested."

"Is it so unforgivable to wish to investigate this death without stepping outside the boundaries of law and decency?"

"Not unforgivable," Mr. Gibbs said. "Only foolish."

He went out the door.

Timothy lingered in the hushed silence of the house and tried to think himself back to the morning, when that same oppressive silence had told him, before anything else had, of Mr. Davies being irredeemably gone. He followed Mr. Gibbs outside into the dark.

()

The doctor in question turned out to be a shortish man named Mallard whom Timothy liked at once for the sake of his Scottishness—as Mr. Anthony began the delicate process of picking the lock with a set of tools which he'd had, somewhat unnervingly, already on his person, Timothy and the good doctor took themselves at once to the lengthy listing of families and places of origin, eventually managing to work out to their own satisfaction that they were third cousins twice removed, or something like, and Timothy was feeling warmly at home for the first time since he had come into Mr. Davies's house bearing the ungainly load of that silly missing clock in his arms.

The lock clicked and Mr. Anthony stood. "If everyone is quite finished with their ancestral lines," he said, motioning them inwards, "and also, for the future, _excessive _conversation is discouraged during the commission of a criminal act."

"Sorry, dear boy," Mallard said, stepping over the threshold as casually as if he were not then ensuring his own term in prison should they all be caught. "Quite right."

Mr. Anthony smiled at Mallard's back. "After you, sir, Mr. McGee."

All of them inside then, picking their way through the dark along the halls and then between the rows of tables which Timothy most adamantly did not want to touch.

"Oh, damn," Mr. Anthony said, "has anyone a match at all?"

Mr. Gibbs produced one and lit it into a flare with his thumbnail. "You ought to have one, though," he said quietly to Mr. Anthony, who said defensively, "I do have everything else," in an exchange that Timothy did not completely understand.

The match burned out quickly enough, but its light at least allowed them to find the lamps which they then lit, one after the other, until the whole hall was ablaze with light. Timothy swallowed. "Ought we to, though? Mightn't the light attract unwanted attention? Perhaps only one row might be—"

"He will work quickly if he can see," Mr. Anthony said, "and not at all if he cannot, an examination in dim light is worse than useless. We will take our chances and, in any case, there are ways of evading such unwanted attention, trumps we have used before and will most likely use again, though, I hope, not tonight." The words were almost polite. He was, Timothy saw, making a distinct effort to amend his earlier mistake—he had said to Mr. Gibbs that he had been an embarrassment, and that he meant to make up for it, and Timothy admired him trying, though he was not sure how anyone could be an embarrassment in such a reckless and illegal situation, to such a reckless and illegal person. Perhaps by following the letter of the law—

Or by following it without any kindness.

Mallard bent over the body. Timothy averted his eyes, but said, "You ought to turn him over, the back of his skull was stove in."

"All in good time," Mallard said. "Mr. Davies, was it?"

"Yes."

"Good. Always better to be able to address one's companions by name." And then, steadily, as if there were nothing inherently awful about the situation, he began to talk to Mr. Davies—to Mr. Davies's body, to be more precise.

"His soul has flown," Timothy said.

"Leave it be," Mr. Anthony said, in the tone of someone who has been through this before. "Go on, Ducky, and pray be brief, for I really do not know how much time we have to spare, and we can use very little of it for explanations."

_Ducky? _For the mallard, Timothy supposed, though it did seem curious. He had heard Mr. Gibbs speak familiarly to Mr. Anthony, but the thought of calling a grown man Ducky had not crossed his mind. In the meantime, that intimacy had not been offered to him, and he would not seize it with bare hands. Ducky—Dr. Mallard—shook his head at Mr. Anthony, clucked his tongue, and resumed his attentions to the body with a hushed and very rambling story about berries and fresh cream that Timothy could not exactly follow. Perhaps it was his lack of sleep.

In the meantime, he wandered up and down the hall with its lumps of bodies on tables, and did his best to avoid looking at them. He wondered if this made him a coward.

Perhaps not, as Mr. Anthony soon joined him in his meandering journeys—Mr. Anthony was mad, and had other faults as well, but he was not, Timothy was sure, a coward on anyone's terms.

"When you rose this morning," Mr. Anthony said, his voice pitched low so that it would not carry beyond the two of them, "you of course realized at once that the night would end this way."

"Of course," Timothy said, a little shakily. "I am prone to such presentiments."

"For myself, it is all fairly routine, except for the interruption of my engagement, which actually did come as a surprise."

Timothy held his tongue. He had apologized once already and frankly, he was sick to death of Mr. Anthony's theatre engagement.

"I am curious," Mr. Anthony said, "who actually directed you towards me."

Timothy opened his mouth to answer and then shut it. "You only want to know because you intend to discover who dared to send me as an interruption to your evening's entertainment. I refuse the question, sir."

"That is very loyal of you, Mr. McGee, but not especially clever, as I shall now have to continue to blame you, and you alone, for that interruption." His smile, even in the dark, was dangerous. "But I have a difficulty resenting someone who otherwise treats me with such cordiality—may I invite you to presume? 'Mr. Anthony' is a dreadfully cumbersome thing to say, in any case."

He must have misread Timothy's startled silence as a desire to refuse the gesture, because he added—more cautiously now, as if disliking any potential rebuff—"I do not request the same license from you, if that is what you fear."

"No, not in the least."

He had only been thinking what a sudden leap that presumption was, with Mr. Anthony not having a surname to his name, as it were. Ordinarily he and Mr. Anthony would have gone from the most formal politeness to simply surnames and then—and even then only eventually, possibly—to their Christian names, which were taken out so rarely by those outside the family that they acquired a patina of dust about them. Should Anthony call him Timothy or McGee?

"The license is yours." He added, trying it out, "Anthony."

Mr. Anthony smiled, now looking much less like a "true confessions" chapbook illustration.

"If you two are quite finished," Mr. Gibbs said dryly.

"My apologies, sir," Anthony said, and the two of them quickly fell into their former places beside the table. Timothy hoped that, having examined the body thoroughly, Dr. Mallard would now refrain from speaking to it.

"Well, Mr. Davies—"

Damn.

"—it appears that someone very unkindly took something very hard, and at least partly wooden, though not at the end of its length—and struck you with it from behind. Most unsporting of them. I'm sure you could have done more if you had known they were there, but—no defensive wounds on the hands, you must have been surprised. In your own house, so late, why wouldn't you? Now, the bruising—"

Timothy shivered. He wondered now if Mr. Davies had heard the footsteps behind him and had simply not turned around. Had he said, "Oh, Mr. McGee, decided to come down for a bit of tea? The clock's almost too good for that table, isn't it? Such a pretty thing"—and suddenly Timothy clapped his hand to his mouth and scrambled away from the table, breathing heavily through the sweat of his palm. _I really must buy gloves_, he thought, his mind dizzy and reeling away from the body, seeking to cling to the smallest of distractions, _should I ever have any money again, of course. But it would be a valuable purchase. Should I come away from this with the dampness on my face, they'll assume I've wept_. And at that he gave a startled laugh.

Anthony looked in a bit of a panic at Mr. Gibbs, who only looked blank.

Dr. Mallard said, "Sometimes people have a bit of a problem with the odor. Decomposition—"

"It isn't that," Timothy said.

Anthony gave him his handkerchief. The second time for that. Timothy cleaned his face carefully and felt his insides began to feel less quivery, his heart less broken.

"I'll have it laundered," he said, not wanting to hand it back to Anthony with his sweat on it now as well as his tears, and tucked it into his waistcoat pocket, ignoring the voice inside that pointed out he had no money for any laundering at all, not even to clean another man's borrowed handkerchief. "It was only—he may have thought that I was coming down again. I went to bed earlier than was my custom. He may—he may have thought I had reconsidered, and that we would have tea, and admire the damnable clock together."

They could not tell him that it was not so.

But to his surprise, Anthony said, "But it was a cane, McGee. Partly wood, and those fragments only at the very bottom of the blow, everything else free of such remains, and the bruising about it circular and smooth, as Ducky said."

"What has that to do with anything?"

Mr. Gibbs took the matter up and said, "Aside from telling us something to identify the man, Mr. McGee, it means that Mr. Davies would have most likely heard the thump of the cane against the floor, as well as the footsteps, and known that it was not you. He was more likely asleep, or drowsing at least, and surprised without thinking of you or anyone else."

"But the man might have carried the cane in his hand without supporting himself," Timothy said, surprised by his eagerness to argue for his own despair. "You cannot know."

"Oh very well," Anthony said, "we cannot know anything, but our supposition is as likely as yours, and so you may as well believe the happier thing. Certainly it would be kinder to my linen."

"Which is," Timothy said, recovering himself, "my very greatest concern."

()

Having successfully evaded seizure and arrest, they returned to the house, only stopping to let off Dr. Mallard at his own, which was both smaller and handsomer than Mr. Gibbs's own. Timothy slept lightly even as the cab rocked against the cobblestones, for Mr. Gibbs had taken Anthony's reproaches at least temporarily to heart, and drove the horses more like a man and less like a fiend from hell. He had eased into sleep fully expecting to be awoken as they passed once more by Mr. Davies's house, now empty but for him, but when Anthony shook him awake, he was not home at all.

"I'd hoped to sleep," he said, rubbing his eyes.

"You _have _slept." Judging by the bitterness of that retort, he imagined Anthony had been kept awake, undoubtedly to keep his close attention on Mr. Gibbs's driving. Certainly his eyes, slightly frenzied, and his face, slightly pale, were tell-tale signs of a lack of rest. "And now I will sleep, and you will sleep _more_, if you will only so very kindly remove yourself from the seat."

Timothy removed himself but stood staring blankly at the cabriolet. He could not seem to make two thoughts run together in any kind of pattern. Anthony, having apparently made up his mind that Timothy _would _stand there, in the way and immovable as a column, simply walked around him, muttering to himself about the inconvenience. At last, thoughts one and two came together and he said, "I can help you with the horses."

"There's no need. We have it all in hand. Go in to bed."

"But," Timothy said, quite unfairly now losing patience with Anthony's thickness when he had only just persuaded his own objection to articulate itself to him, "I've no idea where to find a room inside, and you do, and the work would go quicker with a third set of hands. And then we could all bed down much sooner."

"Fair enough," Mr. Gibbs said, coming up beside him sudden as a ghost. "Help, then."

Timothy helped. He could not wrestle the horses away from Anthony, who seemed convinced that anyone else would do unspeakable damage to them, so he instead assisted Mr. Gibbs in wiping the mud from the cab and oiling down the metal workings of it. The work passed in a blur—he only remembered and was only aware of squatting down at the ground at one point, an old rag black with muck clutched in his hand, wondering why on earth they did this now, at this hour of the night. Even without servants, they might have gone to bed, and cleaned in the morning—or late afternoon, since that was when he felt as if he, personally, would be ready to emerge again from sleep.

"You do the job when it's time for the job to be done," Mr. Gibbs said, and Timothy realized, with a hot flush of embarrassment, that he had spoken at least part of his thoughts aloud.

Anthony, coming back to them smelling of horses and looking quite self-satisfied, said, "Yes, McGee, by his standards, we would truly have to be dying to not do things in accordance with their own best workings. And the cab, you'll notice, is oiled after return home, for the _time_ when you can't do it becomes the _times_ when you don't _want_ to, and then where are you, when that's the only thing you need, a well-working cab?"

Timothy was not sure he understood that. _It seems such a waste of work_, he thought, but this time he bit down on the tip of his tongue to make sure the words did not escape him by accident.

At last all of it was done, and thought it felt as if it had been hours in the doing, he was half-sure that it was not so.

Inside, Mr. Gibbs said, "Go on to bed, Anthony."

"He needs a room."

"Well, yes." It was a you-are-an-idiot voice.

_A steam-powered clock voice_, Timothy thought fuzzily.

Anthony made a sheepish face but moved for the stairs nonetheless. He stopped on the second riser. "The blue bedroom, perhaps."

"At this rate we'll get to yours before you do," Mr. Gibbs said, "and he can sleep in that. Go on before you fall over."

Anthony nodded. "Good night, sir. McGee."

And he disappeared up the stairs, a slightly unsteady figure, still in evening clothes from the theatre. Had all of this been in one night, in a matter of hours? The sky outside was pinkish with oncoming dawn. Timothy felt as if his whole head were filled with sand—his skull, his eyes, his mouth, his ears, everything distant and grainy and difficult to sift through.

He found himself on the second story, Mr. Gibbs's hand a firm support against his shoulder, and he simply gave in and allowed himself to be steered into what must have been the blue bedroom Anthony had wanted for him. He lay down on the bed all in his clothes, not bothering with modesty now or even with politeness, being on the edge of madness himself with the exhaustion—perhaps it had been the long nights of work that had done Anthony's sanity in, perhaps that was it—but nonetheless he fumbled out his thanks to Mr. Gibbs, for the shelter, for the bed, for the case, and then he fell into the hole his fatigue had drilled into his mind and did not emerge for many hours.

()

In the morning, hunger was his first and most immediate thought—nothing in his stomach at all since his small and hasty meal of bread and cheese the morning before. Thinking of the crumbs falling onto the open pages of his book made him remember the fly buzzing in the blood and brain, and he knew that he was half-starved simply because his stomach did not revolt against this image as it had so many times before.

He lay in bed for a moment or two, reassembling his memory of the previous day—poor Mr. Davies, mad Mr. Anthony, hard Mr. Gibbs—and when he was certain that he had it all straight in his mind, he got up puzzling over the question of how to dress or not dress himself when he'd no clothes but the ones he had collapsed in the night before. But, he saw at once, there was a whole suit of clothes laid out for him on a chair in the corner, very clearly neither his own nor, he thought, Anthony's or Mr. Gibbs's—they were all clean, however, and as he looked a fright in his rumpled wool and linen, he put them on with the idea that, should they not be meant for him, he could always take them off again and spend the day in his own creased and disorderly garments.

He shaved and went down to breakfast, not at all knowing the hour of the clock, and surprised, when he saw the sky, to estimate it not much past noon.

Anthony and Mr. Gibbs were eating bread and cheese and bacon and playing piquet, which seemed so cheerfully domestic that it made Timothy rather homesick for a moment before they looked up and noticed him. Anthony, all his breakfast quashed together in a quite ungentlemanly manner—bread then toasted cheese then curls of bacon—gave him a friendly smile and gestured him over.

"I can fetch you a bite as soon as I lose again," he said, "which ought to be—" He frowned with some intensity, regarded his hand, and said, "Now, sure enough. Sir, if you will excuse me?"

He ushered Timothy into the kitchen, which was unmistakably a bachelor's kitchen, with less noise and chaos than Timothy remembered from his parents' household, where their cook had to attend to a whole family all at once, including he and his sister, who as children would unfailingly wonder inside in search of a pinch of dough or a bit of sweet.

The cook, Mrs. Anderson, was a plump and friendly woman who took one look at him and gave him what Anthony, in a very hurt voice, pointed out was fully twice as much as she had given _him _earlier.

"You don't need quite as much building up, sir," she said, "not that you couldn't stand to eat more, and at more regular hours, the Lord knows." She looked him over critically and gave him a slice of bacon, which he ate all at once, his fingers and mouth growing shiny with its grease. "See, all that to eat and you're still hungry now. There was nothing last night after the theatre, was there?"

"No theatre as such," Anthony said. "The engagement was—interrupted."

"But you'd been looking forward to it so!"

Timothy supposed he could always take his own life after he had a decent meal, so he went on and tucked in, following Anthony's example by stacking all the food together and eating it that way. It was heavenly. He made a noise of general flattery that was slightly muffled with bread and bacon, and Mrs. Anderson wryly thanked "the gentleman for his compliments." Anthony shook his head.

"No manners," he said to Mrs. Anderson, "these young gentlemen."

_Are _you _a gentlemen? _Timothy still could not sort him out.

Anthony took him outside again. "You've missed nothing much, or nothing much more than I have, Gibbs of course having been awake hours earlier than anyone sensible would even consider rising after last night. There is only thing—we would like very much for you to reconstruct this missing clock of yours, as exact as you can."

Timothy swallowed—with a pang of regret—his last mouthful of breakfast. He wished for tea. "Why?"

"If someone stole it, it must have been worth stealing, at least to them, and we ought to try and learn why."

"It would have been much easier for me if they had simply bought the cursed thing," Timothy said, "since I tried and tried for hours to market it, and there was no interest at all, only people appalled by all the steam, and rightly so, but if he'd wanted it, why not simply pay a bit for it? I would have sold it for nothing at all, particularly with it so defective. And then Mr. Davies would have lived, and they wouldn't have taken any danger from his death, and we would be looking for no one, and I would be half home by now. On the whole it seems it would have been a much simpler solution."

"Discounting the stupidity of criminals," Anthony said, "which, having had acquaintance with them, I should be loath to do, we must assume, then, that if our man did _not _buy the clock, there must have been a reason why the murder was, to him, simpler than the purchase. And all of this is even assuming that Mr. Davies was murdered because of the clock, and that the clock was not simply taken at random after his death by someone who liked the look of it. We are entangled. Having a model of the clock may help simplify matters."

"Perhaps he could not afford the clock."

"You said you valued it very little."

"There are many things in this world valued very little," Timothy said dryly, "but at the moment, I've no money for any of them."

"Then it's fortunate that you've found such people as are foolish enough to deal with you nonetheless. But, in any case, I don't believe that money was an object for our murderer, and neither does Gibbs."

The pieces came together in Timothy's head. "Because a cane is a gentleman's accessory."

"Quite right." Anthony smiled his not-very-nice smile. "You'll notice I carry one very infrequently."

"There are poorer men with canes," he said, wanting them to be thorough.

"But they've poorer canes," Anthony said, "and this was not that. The splinters were a very good hardwood—mahogany, I should think, and quite rich."

Timothy rubbed the grease from his fingers onto the now very stained wreck of his borrowed handkerchief. "I had thought, before coming to London, that a gentleman was, well, a gentleman, and therefore not a murderer."

"Gentlemen," Anthony said, "are unfortunately as liable to cruelty and carelessness as anyone else. Poor McGee. It's a sweet faith to have in the world, that it works the way it claims to."

When in truth it was as broken as his missing clock, and as liable to burn the unwary.


	5. Chapter V

**Chapter V**

Reconstructing the clock was more difficult than he had expected.

It was not that he did not remember how he had done it the first time. Even without his sketches and his books before him, Timothy could still see, in his mind's eye, exactly how he had done it all: this piece had gone into that, this toothed wheel into the grooves of that one, this pipe here, this vent there, and so on and so forth.

The problem was that making it now, and knowing how flawed it was in its plan, his fingers kept itching to fix it. Perhaps if there were _two _flow pipes, instead of one? Or if he made the whole body of it bigger, what then? He kept making changes automatically and then having to unmake them, his whole self rebelling from constructing intentionally something so badly done.

Not to mention Anthony was a constant distraction, unable to wait in silence for him to finish and constantly poking his head inside the room Timothy had intended for quiet work and asking, "Have you finished yet?"

Perhaps it was revenge for what had happened at the theatre.

Timothy's head jerked up.

"Finished now?" Anthony asked hopefully.

"No, damn you, I've only just remembered that I promised something to that boy at the theatre and never gave it to him."

"The boy who brought me your word?"

The word _Gibbs_, at which he had come running—Timothy quashed down, for the sake of that memory, the sharp retort he had intended. "Yes, him."

"You don't have any money," Anthony said, visibly delighted that he was now allowed to distract Timothy with impunity. "What on earth were you intending to give him? A loose thread from your pocket?"

"No, one of my _contraptions_, as Mr. Gibbs put it." He described the clanking metal play-glove and its purpose to Anthony, who listened to him with an increasingly dubious expression before saying, incredulously, "And that _works_?"

"Not in the least," Timothy said. He looked at the half-finished clock, its flaws seeming to catch the light and reflect it back to blind him. "Nothing I do works in the least. But I thought that in this case it would be better, not to put something dangerous in a child's hand, and he did want it."

Anthony picked up a wheel and rolled it around his finger.

Timothy sighed. "I suppose I can find him again."

"Whilst interrupting other people's evenings?"

Timothy ignored him. "I'll need that. You're very fidgety. Oughtn't you have something of your own to do?"

"I do," Anthony said seriously. "I'm to make sure you finish the clock."

"You're only ever interrupting me!"

"It is, I admit, somewhat self-sabotaging." He relinquished the wheel and carried a chair over so that he could sit down, peering closely at the parts still scattered out on the table. "Now. Show me how you make a clock."

"You won't learn much about it from me."

"I don't need to," Anthony said. "I'm hardly considering taking it up as a hobby. I'm only curious. And," he added as almost an afterthought, "to care about the boy is a kindness on your part, one many people would not make, and that's something you've done in addition to making a genuinely troublesome clock and a few trinkets. You ought to consider it in that light."

"Perhaps," Timothy said.

"Even Gibbs finds that I am very often right."

"Do I, Anthony?"

Anthony jumped forward in his seat and half-into the table, scattering workings like so many marbles: Timothy reached out to catch them in his hands as they leapt to the four corners of the world. He knew from experience that once they made it onto the floor, they would never be seen again, tunneling through the boards into some underworld of dust and scurrying mice. He had excellent luck this time, getting all of them into his fist neat-as-can-be.

Anthony recovered himself. "That is unkind, sir. And when we have floorboards that creak as they do, I do not understand how you manage it."

A smile broke briefly across Mr. Gibbs's face. "Progress, Mr. McGee?"

"A bit."

"He keeps putting it together and taking it apart again," Anthony said, "like Penelope weaving."

"I keep putting it together better than it was before," Timothy said, irritated, "and so taking it apart again not to stall suitors—though God knows poor Penelope never felt so besieged by their questions as I by yours—but because you want it as it was—or is—and not as it ought to have been."

"That's a temptation which is often difficult to avoid," Mr. Gibbs said.

Anthony sulked. "Of course, you do not complain that _he _has besieged you."

"This is the first time he has come in! You have been unceasingly bothering me!"

"I'd thought," Anthony said, "that we were having quite a nice time."

()

When at last the clock was reassembled in its flawed entirety, Timothy called Anthony and Mr. Gibbs inside and displayed it for them. They prudently stood several feet back. "No," Timothy said, "you needn't worry yet. The release valves are flawed, you see, they stopper up, so you have at least ten minutes from the time it's set going to the time it, ah, explodes, as you like. We've seven minutes still, you can come closer if you like."

Mr. Gibbs came matter-of-factly forward and laid hands on the clock, tilting it back so that he could look up underneath its face and examine its skirts, so to speak. Anthony, more cautious, inched forward, but just as Timothy said, "Ah sir, I would perhaps not jostle it about, I'm unsure of the effects," fell back again with an alarmed look on his face.

"Coward," Timothy said lightly.

"You'll forgive me, I've no wish to be killed by a clock."

"Perhaps that is wise," Mr. Gibbs said, "for whoever stole this from Mr. Davies, I'm now sure, intended that someone should die by it."

Anthony grinned. "By its _hands_, as it were."

"That's dreadful," Timothy said, meaning the pun, and then, "What do you mean, sir?"

"For the first ten minutes," Mr. Gibbs said, "it is an ordinary clock to the unaccustomed eye, provided that it has been wound and fueled out of one's sight. One might put it close, on a desk perhaps, and admire it, and then go about the work intended. As it ticks towards ten minutes, whereupon—" He set the clock back down on the table, put his hands together, and then drew them rapidly apart. "The steam comes boiling out, perhaps taking the glass with it, and whoever is near suffers the consequences, perhaps."

"And after, there's nothing to tell what's been done," Anthony said. "Not if the clock is destroyed. Who would think of it, besides you—a steam-powered clock? And if they did, it would seem an accident, not a murder."

"But the clock's survived the steam before," Timothy said. "That one, the one taken, it has. Almost boiled my eyebrows off, but it's intact and so am I."

"What would make it break, then? What would turn something dangerous into something deadly?"

"They would need to let the pressure build still further," Timothy said. He looked closely at his model. "If it were my task to complete—my murder, I suppose, as unfortunate a phrase as that is—I would simply stop up the opening further. Even a bit of putty, a pinch of dust or rag, jammed firmly in, would bottle up the steam until when it went, the glass went with it, and the wheels of its guts as well. It would take very little work, and someone with a sense of the job would know at once how to do it."

"Then there we have it," Anthony said. "A clock, a twist of rag, and an assurance that your man would stay put—and there it is, your murder's done."

Timothy looked at the clock. It had only a few minutes left until its own less-assured destruction, but now the very sight of it unnerved him. "May I shut it off?"

"You can do it without letting out the steam?"

"Without letting out the steam all at once and in every direction, at least," Timothy said, taking Mr. Gibbs's question as assent to his plan, and he quickly removed the glass hood and began to twist and unwind the water carriage from the base. It burned at his fingers. "It's only hot to the touch. Now, if you have the steam building up so steadily, it will be worse. A man could take the skin off his fingers, not to mention the rest of him, if he tried to uncloak it and stop it then. Once the steam's built up, it has to be let out—it's only that now it trickles out, since I haven't let this one go on so long."

"It would take longer than ten minutes, then," Anthony said, "for the real murder."

Timothy shook the heat off his fingers as he laid the carriage, still sloshing, down upon the papers. "Longer, yes, though I'm not sure _how _long, exactly."

"That's a peerage murder, or a lord's one at least," Anthony said, meeting Mr. Gibbs's eyes. "Subtle and vastly overcomplicated."

"More than that," Mr. Gibbs said. "It's a lord's murder of another lord, else he would not be so careful about his method."

"Assassination?"

"Most like." Gibbs rubbed at his brow. "We'll need to find out who, and where, and why, and retrieve Mr. McGee's clock from the situation before it accomplishes its task."

He had come to London to build marvels and to make his fortune, and now he was irreversibly caught up in an assassination plot. He'd thought that doling the toys out along the Thames would do his soul in, not building a clock meant only to rest on the mantelpiece and tick away the hours. He looked at the second model of it, gleaming and treacherous, only one bit of putty or cloth away from lethality, and though that it did not look like such a bad thing to have made. A flawed thing, yes, but not a _bad _thing—he had not intended anyone's destruction, only a clock, and he saw now how he could make a better one, a working one, dangerous to no one at all.

"None of this at all," he said, "has been what I've intended."

Mr. Gibbs shrugged. "Very few of us live the lives we've intended, Mr. McGee. The trick of it is to not live a life someone else has intended, and you've managed that."

"I've built a weapon for a madman."

"You've built a _clock_," Anthony said sharply. "A peculiarly ill-functioning one, I'll grant you, but a clock nonetheless, and you hardly put it into his hands, and he took it straight out of yours."

"I don't take all the responsibility, only my share."

"You take too much."

"Then let him," Mr. Gibbs said. "For now, at least."

Anthony glowered, but reined in his anger and turned to Mr. Gibbs. "Then what should I do with my time instead, sir?"

"What you're going to do," Mr. Gibbs said, "is get us invited to a ball."


	6. Chapter VI

**Chapter VI**

Anthony put his head in his hands and said, for the third time at least, "But it's _impossible_."

Mr. Gibbs had no interest in impossible: "Do it anyway."

"But you don't understand, sir—invitations go out a month before the event, at least. We do not have time for me to disguise myself, befriend a peer, and wait for them to host a ball! By that time, McGee's clock will have killed half of London. I could perhaps manage a dinner party in such a little time, but certainly not a ball, I certainly _cannot_ see us to a ball, sir, I am not a fairy godmother!"

"A dinner party won't do," Mr. Gibbs said. "Not enough people. We need a ball, and one with the best of society. And you know which."

"I always know which," Anthony said crossly, and then he paled. "No, you cannot mean—"

When Timothy was a child, he had been fervently convinced that living under his bed was a creature of unspeakable terror: all wet, bloodied fur and long tongue and red eyes, with a million teeth, and a hunger for flesh. Mr. Gibbs smiled something like that creature. Timothy flinched and felt distinct pity for Anthony; _someone _had to, after all, and Mr. Gibbs's smile had had not one iota of mercy in it.

"The Travingtons always throw the best parties," Mr. Gibbs said.

Anthony scowled at him. "Have the decency not to quote me at myself." He turned to Timothy. "What he wants me to do, you realize, is throw someone else's—and not just someone else's, but _Lady Travington's_, and the woman's a terror—plans into utter chaos at the last possible minute, so we can sneak you into a ball like a pebble into a pudding."

"That's an unfavorable simile," Timothy pointed out, "for someone seeking my sympathy."

"Is the whole world against me? Does no one listen? _It can't be done_."

"Well," Mr. Gibbs said, "it would hardly be first time you'd done something that couldn't be done."

Anthony took his head back out of his hands again and looked steadily at Mr. Gibbs. "Easier to do one than the other, let alone do the first thing twice," and Timothy had no idea what he was talking about, but felt quite clearly that the conversation had now changed and that Mr. Gibbs had won whatever battle they'd been fighting along the edges of the conversational field. He decided to look upon the situation positively: he had never been to a ball before. Merchants' sons were not usually invited.

"The trick is to always end on the part where you come home," Mr. Gibbs said.

This time, Anthony kept his head up. He smiled.

"Right, then. Since, as I've just finished saying to you a hundred times over, it would be flatly and entirely impossible to get us into the ball, I suppose I'll simply have to get _someone else _into the ball, and then we'll simply pretend to be them." He looked at Timothy. "It isn't overly difficult."

"Why can we not be ourselves, rather than other people?"

Anthony scoffed at this: "Because _you're _there to recognize someone, not to be recognized, and anyone who saw you and knew who you were—that you were the man with the clock—they would most likely kill you as soon as they could, and we hardly want that, do we?"

"Well, naturally I don't," Timothy said.

"So there you are, needing to be someone else, and just as naturally, Gibbs will not want to be recognized, though I'll admit it's a lesser chance, because anyone who would recognize Gibbs would know that he does not come to balls in the ordinary way of things and would know what he _does _do in the ordinary way of things, and so there you have that."

"And so you for the same reason," Timothy said.

Anthony's expression became very blank. "Of course," he agreed. "Something like that."

"Who are we going to be, Anthony?" There was a slight warning in Mr. Gibbs's voice, which Anthony seemed to cheerfully ignore, having crossed himself over into some manic state that Timothy could not even half understand until he realized that it was the theatre again, all of it—Anthony eagerly anticipating a good show.

"I suppose," Anthony said, "that I will have to get married."

Gibbs, to Timothy's considerable surprise, grinned. "Abby?"

"No, if she's ever recognized again, it would be a bit of a scandal, and I've no wish to jeopardize her chances. She'll come as herself, and McGee as her cousin, and you as the kindly uncle overseeing the children to the ball, a somewhat quarrelsome chaperone, no doubt, but I cannot make you, of all people, into someone you're not."

"And Abby my daughter?"

"As I said, you will remain most stubbornly yourself. Yes, she will be your daughter, you could scarcely act as if she were anything else." He had been tumbling along, one thing after another, confident in his own scheme, but now he stopped, frozen still, his hands dead in the air. "Would you mind it, sir?"

Mr. Gibbs shook his head. "Go on with it, Anthony. It's fine."

But he was hesitant now, and Timothy pitied him a little, although he did not know why it should matter so much, to cast this Abby as Mr. Gibbs's daughter—he only wished he knew her a little better, if they were to play cousins—when Mr. Gibbs himself did not seem to mind. _Poor Anthony_, he thought. _People are always pulling you out of the theatre_.

"What remains is to settle my own position," Anthony said.

"Simple enough to make you another cousin."

"I would not overburden Gibbs with imaginary siblings. No, best for me to have no connection to the rest of you beyond friendship—an old friend of the family, well-settled in London with my wife, if I can find a suitable young woman at this late hour—someone lovely, charming, witty, and of a good family." He quirked one corner of his mouth. "And if all of that falls through, well, the Lady David is in town, or so I've heard—and she ought to be, with her frequency of appearing just as soon as there's the merest chance of putting me in an awkward position."

"The Lady David?"

"The Lady David, McGee, is not to be trifled with, and you'll notice I'm not marrying _you _off to her."

"Who is she?"

"Who indeed?"

"I have never met so many ambiguous people in all my life," Timothy said. "Not a one of you has a surfeit of history." As soon as he said it, he knew that it was a grave miscalculation to have said it aloud, though it had been constantly on his mind: he came from a village where everyone knew everyone's family history going back at least three generations in both directions. It was a world so small that one could never have slipped a cousin in sideways, let alone two. It was, for that matter, a world where you could not have asked the question "Who indeed?" of anyone, a world where a Christian name and a surname were bedfellows, a world where men did not casually invent their wives out of whatever mysterious women were in own at the moment.

"This is London, McGee," Anthony said. "The history lies without, not within."

"Do you find our lives inconvenient, Mr. McGee?" There was nothing that Mr. Gibbs could have plausibly done to him, or would do to him, and Timothy knew that he could say yes and bow out of the work knowing that they would go on trying to save the life of whatever lord or lady was threatened by his damnable clock. There was no threat he could have made.

Nonetheless, there was one there, in that voice, unspecified but terrifying nonetheless.

Timothy resented it. He did not need it; he had realized his mistake before Mr. Gibbs had stepped in at all, and he had not even needed Anthony's explanation. He did not understand them, but he could see them well enough from the outside, he thought, like figures in a novel, and he could see that they were in a different story than his own. He had stepped straight into the middle chapter of their lives, dragging his own along as an awkward appendix, and so had no right to muck with their stories or malign them, however slight and barely sketched those stories were.

He met Mr. Gibbs's eyes with as much coolness as he could muster and bowed slightly. "There is no inconvenience, sir. I spoke well out of turn."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Anthony said. "Certainly none of us have done that before. Gibbs in particular has never made an error of tact." To Timothy's surprise, Mr. Gibbs's expression softened, and he swatted his hand in the general direction of Anthony's head. Anthony ducked it. "In answer to your question, the Lady David is a mystery even to the best-informed of us. She is Jewish, from Spain—though not originally, or so I heard once from a man who died not soon after our conversation. Impeccable English in the most ordinary way of things, as long as she avoids any idioms. She's very beautiful and very dangerous, she carries many knives, and she has a very strange sense of humor."

"She sounds lovely."

"Oh, she'll pass through society quite well, I assure you. She is, after all, known as the _Lady _David, though she does not have, as you've observed, a surfeit of history. And it's _Dah-veed_, properly, though no one calls her that. She likes to have the English wrong-footed in conversation with her—in English, of course—from time to time, and so if you butcher her name, you warm her to the very depths of her soul, which is naturally why I always pronounce it most perfectly to her face."

"One day that won't end well for you, Anthony."

"We all die one day," Anthony said, "or so I have heard, and better to do it at the hands of the Lady, if it must be done."

"And you intend to marry this woman, even in jest?"

"Not in jest," Anthony said. "You mustn't think of it like that. Being someone else is always a deadly serious business, and not to be undertaken lightly."

()

Abby, as it turned out, was Miss Mallard—the adopted ward of the good doctor. Timothy fell in love with her at once: she admired the clock, was thrilled by its propensity to explode, and immediately began fussing with the mechanical bits to make one of her own. She smeared grease all over her good gloves, flushed her own cheeks with heat from the steam, and borrowed bits of clockwork from him for her own use later. He would have to marry her, there was nothing else for it.

"We're, ah, to be cousins, I hear," he said, standing about idiotically with his hands in his pockets, watching her at her work.

"The very best of cousins," she said, with a brilliant smile. "I am sure we would have spent our childhoods together making all the clocks run backwards and then explode. And Gibbs my father, and Tony our very oldest friend?"

_Tony? _Was there anything to concern him there? Mr. Gibbs's first instinct _had _been to marry off Abby to Anthony in this game of theirs, but perhaps that meant nothing—Anthony had, after all, shown no interest in the affair, and attached himself to the Lady instead.

"That is as I understand it. And we're to invent a fiction for ourselves, though Anthony told me we won't do it properly at all, and he will have to cover for us."

She laughed. "He is always very critical of other people's inventions, though half of his he borrows from melodrama—he gave calling himself Anthony Sheppard a good long try, after Jack, you know—" He did not. "—and he was sour when people recognized it and sour when they did not, for he felt they ought to have done, and so Gibbs very sensibly put a stop to it, and told him to call himself whatever he liked, so long as it wasn't from a play, and Tony sulked for a week and finally left off calling himself anything at all."

"Well, we have a distinct need of names, and it would be best to avoid any from the theatre, so you ought to choose, I should think."

"You might as well remain a McGee, if you've no objection."

"I have, though, I'm afraid. It appears that someone may want to kill me."

"Well," she said, "that we cannot have, for I wouldn't care to mourn a cousin I only just invented. –Todd, then, it's sensible enough, and I had a playmate called that, many years ago." Her face grew wistful, which in his already lovestruck condition made him want to offer her pearls and rubies and diamonds, horses and stables, houses and countries, all to make her grow happy again. "We were the very best of friends, once."

"Did you grow apart?"

She shook her head and a tear tumbled down her cheek, shaken from her by the motion: "No, she died." She offered nothing more.

"Then to take her name would be a sign of respect and affection on your part," Timothy said. "So we will be the Todds, a most respectable family, and so new to London that we know no one at all but Mr. Anthony." Something perverse in him made him add the _mister_ once again, as if to counteract Miss Abigail's still slightly troubling familiarity.

"He must have always come to visit us."

"He must," Timothy agreed, not really wanting to discuss Anthony any further. "And what have we done with ourselves all those years? We can't have passed all the time building clocks."

"It would hardly be time wasted," she said, gazing fondly upon their fatal little masterpieces—she was making him think quite well of the things—but then focused her attention on the task at hand. "Very well, I have had a tragic love story—notes exchanged with an officer, poems written in the very deepest secrecy of the parlor, and you have intervened, quite the gentleman, and brought me to London. I'm well-rid of his pernicious influence, the rogue, but I don't know it as of yet, and am quite upset with you, and liable to burst into tears at any moment."

"Is that really necessary?" he asked, alarmed.

"It may be. Nothing distracts a room even half so well as a crying woman."

()

Their invitations arrived the next morning—_Lady Travington requests the pleasure of Mr. Todd's company this evening_, and so on. Timothy read it approximately one hundred times before he lay it to the side of his breakfast plate.

"You needn't look as if it were something you caught in your teeth and dragged back all on your own," Anthony said, bemused. "You sit there licking over it like a cat."

Timothy put some jam on his now cold toast. "I've never received one before." He tried to bite as nonchalantly as possible into the toast, but only earned a smear of jam on his upper lip. He wiped at it with his hand: he'd discovered that table manners in Mr. Gibbs's house were casual things at best, Anthony in particular often eating standing up in the kitchen while pacing back and forth, creating a flurry of crumbs as he tried to chew and talk at the same time. A little jam on his fingers would not cause anyone any alarm.

Anthony said, "Well, none of us receive so very many." He was eyeing Timothy's toast with distinct interest, despite having already finished his own. Timothy ate hurriedly until the gleam in Anthony's eyes disappeared.

"In any case, it was all well-done on Lady Travington's part," Anthony said. "_Requests the pleasure_ is the standard way of putting things, you know, and with all of it so rushed, and having to write invitations one day for a ball the next, she might well have put _unexpected pleasure_, and no one would have faulted her for it. Of course, the servants will be bedeviled, for extra food, extra chairs, extra rooms, and so on—we ought to take something to them afterwards, sir," he addressed this at Mr. Gibbs, "to—make up for the additional burden we've imposed."

Mr. Gibbs nodded. "Well done, Anthony."

A flush crept up past the line of Anthony's collar. "Thank you, sir."

There was a beat in which Timothy felt that he was chewing his toast unnecessarily loudly. It crunched and cracked between his teeth, like chewing pebbles or paving stones.

"In any case," Anthony said, "if we're introducing ourselves so unconventionally, we ought to be conventional in as many ways as we can manage."

Timothy swallowed the still rocky remains of his toast in a single, painful swallow. It fell like lead down into his stomach. "I've nothing at all to wear, I've only just realized. I never anticipated needing evening wear in London."

This was true, if a tad false in its implications—he had never owned evening wear at home, either. What if all of that showed somehow tonight, in the way he carried himself, in the way he spoke? Could the quality read, in the jam-stickiness on his fingers, in the cut of his hair, in the shine of his boots, that he was a merchant's son, jumped-up into their company? Would he seem vulgar? His family was not vulgar, but then again, his family had never screamed at a stranger outside a theatre and then gone quite unexpectedly to live with him.

"That's nothing to be concerned about," Anthony said. "We'll have some of mine altered down, there are places where one can get quick tailoring down, although they're never cheap, God knows, but better, as I said, for us all to pass as unremarkable."

Mr. Gibbs said, "Your older clothes might fit him more readily."

Anthony rolled his eyes. "They might, but he'd look a fool, the fashion's all wrong now. They're neither the proper color nor the proper cut, and besides that, they're demonstrably old, if well-tended, and he's a country _gentlemen_, after all—prettily impoverished or no, coming to a baron's party not dressed correctly."

"I would like to blend in inasmuch as I can," Timothy put in anxiously.

"You'll mix as well as anyone," Anthony said, giving him a glance. "Why the concern?"

He thought of trying to convey to Anthony—who was obviously, as Smith and Stebbins had said, somebody's son from somewhere, his fear of the ranks of gentlemen and ladies, barons and baronesses, and all of it sounded ridiculous before it even made its way close to his lips. He settled for repeating himself: "I've never received an invitation before."

"Oh, McGee," Anthony said. "You're worry yourself quite without reason. No one need know where you come from, or who your family is, or who you are, even—all of that vanishes the moment you wish it to. There is no secret thing that makes a gentleman a gentleman, no extra presence of integrity, and if there were, you would be one already. Act as you are—perhaps without dragging anyone out of their previous and much-anticipated theatrical engagements by their ear—and no one will suspect anything of you but what you show them. Most likely, mothers will try earnestly to attach their daughters to you after only a dance."

He paused. A look of horror spread across his face. "You _can _dance, of course?"

"Oh. Oh, yes. We learned. I'm not especially good."

Anthony relaxed again. "Many men are not especially good. You'll manage. If you tread on the lady's toes, do your best to make it endearing."

"And where is _your _lady, Anthony?"

"I've not the faintest idea, sir. Doubtless somewhere bloody and inconvenient, but she'll appear, and on time, and look impeccable as she does. I've no concern at all about her, provided she doesn't kill someone in the ballroom, which would be a bit of an awkward affair for us all."

"And Miss Abigail?"

Something of his dizziness for her must have crept into his tone—Anthony looked as if he were trying to stifle a laugh, and Mr. Gibbs merely glared.

"The lovely Miss Abigail," Anthony said, "will be collected by us shortly before the ball. I've hired a driver, by the by, so there's no scandal about _you_ driving, sir, nor will you break all our necks and ruin the horses."

"I wouldn't break everyone's neck, Anthony," Mr. Gibbs said, sipping his tea. "Only yours."

"Such recklessness and cruelty," Anthony said, "is why you of course will be dancing with no one."

()

The hastily tailored clothes fit Timothy well enough, though they were stiffly creased at all the points where they had been taken in. He rubbed at the creases, but they persisted. Still, he had seen gentleman more wrinkled than himself appearing quite unashamedly in public, and so he presented himself for inspection with few qualms.

Mr. Gibbs barely glanced at him. "Fine."

Anthony sputtered. Mr. Gibbs smirked over the fold of his newspaper.

"I know I'm a bit creased."

Anthony waved a hand. "The creases are nothing and, in any case, they're unavoidable, so there's no use worrying over them. No, you're simply all kinds of crooked everywhere you should be straight."

"Well, you've no valet."

"I thought the whole point of the merchant classes was that you all knew how to dress yourself."

"No," Timothy said, miffed, "we kept servants, they didn't all run off from fear of us the way _yours _seem to have done. Two days and I've never even glimpsed your maid."

"That's true enough," Anthony said. "Perhaps she was driven away by your exploding clock. Now do stand still." He fussed with Timothy's clothes, yanking the waistcoat and dress coat into place and then sighing in frustration over his cravat before simply tugging it off and retying it. "There. It's a marvel either of you ever looks like anyone worth knowing."

"Mr. Gibbs looks altogether like a gentleman," Timothy protested.

"Mr. Gibbs _is _a gentleman, but he only looks one at the moment because I've done him already." Anthony scrutinized him from head to toe. "And now you look one as well. Costuming is important, you know, particularly with you. If you felt yourself to be a gentleman, you could wear whatever you liked to the ball, and the very force of your smugness would sustain you through anyone's inquiry. But as you're convinced you're a cuckoo, this is for the best."

"_You_ look like a gentleman," Timothy said quietly, for he could see it now, entirely: Anthony wore all of it, the perfectly-tied cravat, the silk waistcoat, the clean white gloves, and even down to his linen, most likely, as if he were born into it. There was comfort to it.

"Costuming, as I said." Anthony looked away. "Do you have the time on a clock that is not entirely terrifying?"

"Twelve minutes," Mr. Gibbs said.

"Right." He ran a hand through his hair. "And who am I this time?"

Mr. Gibbs frowned. "Mr. John Roberts."

"Yes. Awful name, shouldn't have chosen it. Too bland." He shook his head. "And, of course, you are Mr. Roger Edwards, and McGee is Mr. Thomas Todd, and oh, good Lord, we've too many Christian names altogether and not a surname among the lot of us, how could I have done that? It's a distinct error, it makes no sense at all for us all to know each other and have such names at that, too unlikely—"

"The Travingtons did not even notice," Mr. Gibbs said. "Calm down."

"Yes," a silky voice said from the parlor door. "You are too excited altogether, Anthony. Not everyone approaches life as if were a puzzle, the good people at your ball will not even think to question your reality, though they ought to."

The Lady David needed no introduction: she glided forward, done up, as Anthony had promised, perfectly from head to toe. Timothy had never seen a woman so glamorous. She was wearing a cream gown that rustled with taffeta and was fluffed out to the sides by her crinoline, which sashayed gently from her hips. Dark blue flowers were tucked into the gown, and their faint scent tickled the air. She was, like Anthony, the embodiment of all those things to which Timothy could never even aspire. She was rich, lush, elegant.

Anthony laughed at her. "Your skirts got fuller, Lady David. I know what that always means."

She smiled. "One never knows what one will need, traveling in the very highest ranks of English society. And what if I should need to defend my escort?"

"Knives," Anthony explained to Timothy. "She has knives and a revolver and Lord knows what else down there underneath her skirts, so woe betide any man, besotted or simply sodden, who attempts to interfere with her." He kissed her hand. "I was beginning to think you would be late, my dear, and I should have to go to the Travingtons' party without my darling Elizabeth."

"Elizabeth?"

"Ziva, properly," she said, "and we have not been introduced."

"Ah yes," Anthony said. "Lady David, this is Mr. Timothy McGee. McGee, this is the Lady."

Timothy bowed.

The Lady David, an eyebrow delicately arched, curtsied in response. She said to Anthony, "He's quite darling, isn't he? But perhaps you do not think so—I have heard already about what happened at the theatre. Such a shame for you."

"Has all of London nothing else to discuss but my interrupting Anthony at the theatre?"

"There has been not a whit of scandal besides," the Lady said. "Though it _is _London, Mr. McGee, so if you wait long enough, something is bound to happen to overturn your shocking lapse of courtesy."

"Mr. Todd," Anthony said. "For the night he is Todd, and Abby Miss Abigail Todd, as well."

"Brother and sister?"

Timothy flushed.

"Cousins. Poor McGee is quite infatuated." He clapped Timothy on the shoulder. "Though all of this you know, surely—undoubtedly you knew my plans before I knew them myself, and all of that besides, you were standing in that door soon enough to catch me wrong-footed, which is doubtless something you learned from Gibbs."

"No," Mr. Gibbs said, finally abandoning his tea and deigning to join them, "that came naturally to her. Good to see you, Ziva." He kissed her lightly on the cheek. "If you can tolerate Anthony for an evening, you might do us the honor of staying in London for a few days. A spare pair of eyes would not go amiss in all the confusion."

"I shall certainly consider it." She looked curiously at Timothy. "Are you really the same Mr. McGee who built all those curious contraptions, and the clock that will explode?"

"It was never intended to explode," he told her. "All of that was accidental."

"Well," she said, "if you could contrive the accident a second time, I would not mind such a thing for myself—one never knows when that kind of timepiece would be of the very best use."


	7. Chapter VII

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to The Mad Shadow, who correctly noted that the Lady David most likely would have been traveling most of her life while there were attempts to form a unified Jewish state, with the further possibility of her having spent most of her life in Spain-so that man may have given Anthony bad information! Also, there were a few people who had either blocked messaging or weren't logged in, so I couldn't reply to the individual reviews, but thank you so much for your kind feedback!

()

**Chapter VII**

There had surely never been a house like Lord and Lady Travington's, not in all the wide world: the dark floors gleamed smoothly and flawlessly as a lake at nighttime, the rooms were so large that Timothy felt swallowed by them like some hapless Jonah, and everywhere he looked, there was some treat, some unexpected glory—the bouquets of fresh flowers in their painted bone china vases, the refreshment table with its tingling lemonade, chandeliers cut of sparkling crystal, the exhibit of painted-skin and –feather fans Lord Travington had brought back from his travels as gifts for his lady. Timothy gawked at everything, he couldn't help it.

He whispered to Miss Abigail, "Are all wealthy houses like this?"

"I've never been to one quite as grand," she said, smoothing out her skirt as if his nervousness were infectious, "but a ball is a ball is a ball, and what matters are the people, being in good company. You want to have a good time, and some of these people look awfully stuffy."

She did not look stuffy at all. Like Anthony, like the Lady David, she looked entirely comfortable and correct in her place, an example of the very best of the quality, perfect from head to toe. Her flowers were lighter than the Lady's—she was younger, unmarried—but if he came close to her—as he was close to her now—he could just smell them, that sweet and somehow pink scent of the roses—

"They'll start soon," she said, having deduced his ignorance of the proceedings. "A quadrille, the first dance is always a quadrille. Lady Travington's daughter will lead with whatever man here is of highest rank."

"Oh Lord, it would not ever be me, would it? Surely not. I mean, not me, but Thomas Todd."

"I should not make too loud a distinction between the two," she said, her mouth twitching and her eyes shining as if she could not help but laugh at him but were trying most earnestly to be polite. "But no—there is bound to be a large collection of earls and dukes and I don't know what all, and even if there were not, and they were down to simply gentleman, Anthony would supersede you, and Gibbs him, by age alone."

"We might have come as dukes and duchesses," he said. "It is a pity one cannot invent a duchy out of air and wishing for it, or I would have carried you here in the finest coach as Miss Abigail and lifted you out a duchess." He realized, too late, that he had somehow married them off on the way, for who was he, in this fantasy, but the duke, or the feigned duke, holding onto his lady's hand, his thumb caressing the petals pinned into her dress? Miss Abigail would be quite within her rights to be offended, even if practicality at the moment meant that she could hardly demand another escort.

Instead, she laughed, which both relieved him and pricked his vanity—was it so humorous a thought, to be married to him, even if it were only in play? Would she have stood without laughter to be linked to Anthony, or to Gibbs?

"A marchioness," she said. "I believe I would prefer a marchioness, or viscountess, perhaps—they're far more fun to say, and, as I explained, at a ball, it's the fun of the thing that matters."

"And the company," Timothy said lightly, bowing to her.

She mad a brief curtsey in return. "And the company."

()

Timothy was able to dance the first dance with Miss Abigail, at least, although the problem with dancing a quadrille was that you were always losing your partner and catching her again from another gentleman, and round and round it went, you taking hands with a number of ladies to whom you had not been introduced—and, in his case, a number of ladies who would have refused any introduction with him, very likely, if they had known his proper name and his proper circumstances—which all began to feel a bit giddy and improper after a bit. Not to mention a dollop of hot wax would every so often fall steaming to the floor—and the heedless dancers—from the candles ensconced in the chandeliers he had earlier so admired. He was beginning to feel that a society ball was a quite dangerous enterprise, and not to be undertaken lightly in the least, but he would have been more than willing to tolerate the danger and the rush and the gain-and-loss of the whole thing if he had been able to keep Miss Abigail as a partner, but she was rapidly engaged for almost the whole of the night as soon as the quadrille had ended. The Honorable Thomas Travington, instantly smitten, had claimed her for three dances, which really was quite at the limit of propriety, though Timothy would not have minded daring the same breech of etiquette.

Although it would not quite have fit with their cover, as Miss Abigail was supposedly in a tiff about him pulling her away from that officer who had been making love to her, and still furthermore, he was in the most technical terms only at the ball to identify a murderer.

The problem was that nearly every man in evening dress—all bars of black and white, shadow and gleam—looked in some way identical, made from exactly the same mold. And he kept having to dance, for it would have been very rude to lurk on the margins staring at the gentlemen, and Anthony had been right—the mothers present seemed to sense his essential good intentions more than they sensed his essential poverty, and they kept pushing their daughters off on him for dances.

Even at supper, he was bracketed by an eligible young lady and a long-mustached baronet who had no interest in him whatsoever, but a great deal of interest in the young lady, with whom he struck up a very amiable conversation across Timothy's plate. By the end of the meal, Timothy had learned a good deal more about hunting than he had ever wished to know, and was beginning to think that it would be best for everyone, and certainly himself, if he were simply to name the baronet as the killer and the clock-thief, and take great satisfaction in his punishment and eventual death.

That he restrained this impulse said, he thought, something quite significant about his strength of character, so perhaps he deserved all this attention after all.

At last, he found Anthony at the refreshments table during one of the very last dances. Anthony was drinking lemonade and eating—albeit in a more dignified manner than he ate anything at home—biscuits and sandwiches and ices all in great succession.

"You'll burst your waistcoat buttons," Timothy said, wearily taking up a glass of wine for himself.

For the moment, the table was deserted but for the two of them, which Anthony confirmed with a brief glance all about, and then he said, "I'm hardly in danger of that. I never took a bite at supper. Talked my head off, sounded like an idiot, I'm very glad you didn't hear me."

"I was all down at the other end, between two people who ignored me frightfully."

"Being ignored is the only way you get anything to eat," Anthony said. "That, or ignoring others frightfully yourself, which is, I'm sure, why Gibbs is stuffed to the gills." He savagely stuffed the entirety of the biscuit into his mouth, looking like a starving child taking whatever food he could before he was discovered and immediately removed. Perhaps he had been raised by wolves rather than gentlemen, after all. "Have you found our man yet?"

"I've been too spun about."

"Ignored at dinner and patronized extensively on the dance floor, well, you _are _having a good evening, aren't you? I told you the mothers would like you, and encourage their daughters to do the same."

"Yes, well, they would not like me one whit if they knew who I really was." He swallowed down the bitterness with the wine.

"If it is any comfort to you, they've no idea who anyone really is." He offered Timothy a biscuit, which, considering how he had devoured all the others with the intensity of an animal let loose to feed, seemed a gift too thoughtful to refuse. "But we must find some peace and quiet for you, although you are so heavily in demand, because I am certainly not getting us into another ball, and so whatever recognition you must make, I would tell you to make it now, and then we can seize the fellow and go merrily to home and bed."

"I cannot recognize a man just so you can have some sleep."

"It seems to me that you might try a little harder. Think all of them through, one by one, face by face—have you seen him before? This one, was he the one standing so still on the street-corner when you wound the clock? Did that one send his man over to buy one of your little silver claws, a retractable knife, a top with razor blades put on? The other, his cane has a knot of ebony at the top of it, it's a lovely thing, have you seen that before?"

"They all look alike."

"Yes, I know, it's the clothes—costumes, as I said. It's why I didn't need to paint you like an actor to ensure no one would recognize you—our man, whoever he is, would never expect to see you here, looking like this, and his eyes will trick him. But yours must not trick you. Look, _think_."

Timothy tried to take all of them in, though with them constantly shifting, and the ladies blowing in between them like flowers in a wind, it was difficult to keep them all in place and move smoothly from one to the other. But soon enough he felt he had covered the whole room, and he shook his head. "None of them. I've a good memory for faces, and it's none of them."

"Are you certain, McGee?"

"I would have remembered any man so fine standing out where I was," he said. "It is not a place that ordinarily sees such fine guests. He would have leapt out of the background, glittered like a diamond in the street."

"Then we have wasted a good deal of time for no purpose. No, no, don't look so crestfallen, it's nothing to do with you, I believe you, it makes every kind of sense, I only wish we had thought of it before. There is still hope for the other prong of the plan—Gibbs and I have heard stories of quarrels and feuds, all night men having been confiding in us that they wished dueling were still quite the thing, and so if we sift through all their complaints, we may find the complaint between lords that is at the heart of Mr. Davies's murder and your stolen clock."

The music stilled, and Lady Travington began calling out in her fluty voice for the last dance, last partners. Anthony elbowed him closer to the main floor.

"Go on and dance the last with Abby, for I can see she's been heartbroken by your absence."

This was most obviously not true at all, but Timothy gave in to the flattery of it and took two more steps on his own towards the glittering crowd and Miss Abigail, sure enough, waiting for him on the margins of it. So much for the younger Travington, then. But Timothy stopped, and turned back.

"Where will you be?"

"Stripping off Mr. John Roberts and putting myself back on, for I sent the driver off for the evening once we arrived, and someone will need to drive us home. I will pay another man for a coat more worn than this one and meet you at the door, inconspicuous as you like. Now go on."

Timothy went on, catching Miss Abigail's white-gloved hand in his own, feeling her pulse against his own wrist, and swept her off into a dance. He hated to let her go as the men traded partners, but he loved, always, to see her coming back again. By the end of it, he was a little damp with sweat and breathless with the motion, his feet sore, his heart full, and his whole sense of himself very satisfied—he had done it, gone as a gentleman for the whole evening, and no one had sensed anything about him to give lie to his borrowed clothes and his feigned name.

He fell into step again with Mr. Gibbs, now escorting the Lady David out himself with the excuse to Lady Travington that Anthony—or Mr. John Roberts, in any case—had come over ill near the end and had to leave, such a pity, knew he had been having the most wonderful time. It was the Lady who made these excuses quite charmingly to their hostess, as Mr. Gibbs looked with each passing minute more and more as if he would set fire the ballroom sooner than he would spend any more time inside it, and the younger Honorable Thomas Travington clung to Miss Abigail's hand until the very last moment, which put Timothy in rather a sympathetic frame of mind for Mr. Gibbs's plan.

But they had caught the tail end of the procession out, and so had needed to wait and wait for the attention of their hostess, and by the time they had escaped Thomas and the Lady Travington and the four of them came blinkingly out of the light and into the dark, most of the other guests had already left.

And their own cabriolet was nowhere in sight.


	8. Chapter VIII

**Chapter VIII**

The four of them stood very still in the emptiness around the doors. The street was bare. No cab, and no Anthony—the darkness of London suddenly seemed heavy and oppressive, as if the whole of the night sky were knotted together to fill the gaps between the gaslights. The last cheer of the final dance and the last scent of the ladies' flowers evaporated into the air. Silk brushed against his leg—the Lady David was reaching into a pocket cut into her skirts. By reflex, he looked away, though he saw nothing and heard only the rustle of cloth.

He felt that some voice of rationality, or an attempt at it, was needed, and said, "Perhaps he is only having trouble with the horses," though this sounded stupid and irrational the moment he'd said it.

Miss Abigail said, "Trouble with the horses? _Tony_?" and Timothy remembered Anthony stretching out his hand to let them lap sugar and apple slices from his palm. He thought that they would save his life because of that, if it came to it, and here they were with no horses and a murderer somewhere, unrecognized but attentive to them.

"Stables," Mr. Gibbs said. "Mr. McGee, take Abby back into the Travingtons'. Make some excuse."

He set a brisk pace for the stables, the Lady immediately behind him, and Timothy thought of protesting—could he not help Anthony just as well as they could?—but then reconsidered: Smith and Stebbins were terrified of Mr. Gibbs, after all, and the Lady David's skirts were full of weapons. He took Abigail's arm in his own. "We can say that you were taken with a chill, and must sit down—"

She wrested her arm away from him. "You can be taken with a chill all you like, _I_ intend to help Tony." She took off running towards the stables as well as she could in her dress, and he ran after her. If he could not keep her safe, and he could not help Anthony, the least he could do was run after both of them as if he would be of any use to them once he caught them.

They made it to the stable doors only an instant behind the Lady and Mr. Gibbs, but Timothy's feet were still carrying him forward when her heard Mr. Gibbs shout to someone to stop. Something in the distance flickered up above their heads, black and coiled like a snake—and then there was a shot, so close to him that he almost jumped into Mr. Gibbs's back.

He turned his stumble into a run as Mr. Gibbs also darted forward in the silence after the shot had rung out, and caught sight of the revolver—smoke still tumbling from it—in the Lady's hand.

The horses were whinnying, crying, screaming—all of it was going straight through his head. He dropped down to his knees beside Anthony on the ground and thought for a second that it was Anthony that the Lady had shot—there was so much _blood_—but then he saw the other man—the body of the other man—and what had fallen from his hand. Long, black, bloodied—a horsewhip.

Anthony's face was white and he was breathing hard through his teeth. Mr. Gibbs pulled him from the ground and held him upright, one hand clamped around his arm and the other around the back of his head to stop it from drooping sideways like a top-heavy flower, his thumb against Anthony's cheek. "Tony," he said, "Tony." He had tried, Timothy saw, not to touch any place on his back, where the fabric was matted to him with blood.

Anthony's eyes opened just a slit. "Sir." He tried to turn his head and made a little hiss of pain. "Where did he go? The man?"

"Dead," Mr. Gibbs said. "The Lady shot him."

"Happily," the Lady said, now also on her knees beside him, close enough for Timothy to smell the horses on her and know that she was the reason for the quiet now—she had gone stall to stall and calmed them, but still their screaming was in his ears. He knew why she had done it—the noise would have attracted more attention than they could afford—but still he felt a pang of entirely personal gratitude towards her, as if she had done it to save him from losing his head at some crucial moment.

"I am not ungrateful," Anthony said, his voice still hollowed-out, "but we might have learned the identity of his employer first."

"No," Mr. Gibbs said. "She had no choice." And Timothy saw again, in his mind's eye, the curve of the whip arching upwards to come down again—if the Lady had let him live even a second more, the blow would have landed, one more among many, and that had given them no choice. How much of Anthony's flesh and blood to trade for their answers? Not this much, surely, and Mr. Gibbs answered his thought by adding, "I would have done the same thing."

Anthony opened his eyes a little wider. "Yes?"

Mr. Gibbs nodded. "But not so cleanly." He held Anthony's gaze. "Can you stand?"

"If you will help me up."

Mr. Gibbs did so, and then directed Miss Abigail to stand under Anthony's arm. Anthony straightened a little more as he held onto her. "No fear, Abby," he said to her. "It's nothing so much."

"Can he not _rest_?" Timothy heard himself say—it was cruel, it was brutal, it was entirely unfair, he was all over bloody, he should not be made to walk out of the stables on his own two feet, propped up by Miss Abigail or not. He had seen horses cut to ribbons with horsewhips, but never men, and Anthony was pale with shock.

The Lady David said, "He cannot stay here. Someone would come, sooner or later, like flies to money."

"Honey," Anthony said. "You did that for me, did you not?"

"I have no earthly idea what you suppose I did, or for whom," she said lightly. A lady who smelled of gunpowder and horses and still, faintly, flowers, and the sweat of the ballroom. "Mr. McGee, I will need help to move the body."

"But I do not—I have never—" He looked at the patch of blood in the packed dirt of the stable floor. It was a dark stain on the otherwise colorless background, like a bruise, or a scar. "Yes. Very well. I suppose we take him to the Thames? There's never a body that turns up without which first it was thrown into the Thames, or so I have heard." He had learned that from Smith and Stebbins, so long ago it felt like something he'd taken in at his mother's knee.

She shook her head. "An admirable, if common, thought. No, we may take him anywhere we like, provided we do not leave him for the Travingtons, who will not know what to make of him. His employer has left him with no charity, and I see no reason why we should take any more. Let us simply carry him out of doors and lump him against a wall."

"And if anyone asks our purpose, carrying around a corpse?"

"Then he is no corpse," she said, "merely very drunk." She produced a flask from her skirts and, with no hesitation, sopped a large amount of alcohol down the man's shirt-front. "And so close to us, it will cover up the stench of the gunpowder, likewise. Come and help me."

Between the two of them, they hauled the man outside and met with no one whatsoever, which mildly disappointed Timothy, who had been counting on a chance to irritably complain about the man's incredible drunkenness. They, as the Lady had advised, "lumped" him against a wall, and the Lady tucked her flask into his hand and, after a moment standing above him, spit upon him with the same utter matter-of-factness that she had done everything else that evening—dancing, curtseying, killing, disposing of the body. Dangerous, Anthony had said, and a mystery. Well, that much was clear, at least. Timothy stared at her, his hands still shaking from the queer excitement and horror of carrying out the body and letting it fall where it would.

Back in the stables, they brushed the blood into the dirt again with their shoes, Anthony's blood on the soles of his feet, black-red against the leather. His stomach curdled inside him.

Mr. Gibbs and Miss Abigail had found the cab somewhere down the opposite road, uncollected but unharmed, and loaded Anthony into it. Mr. Gibbs sat inside as well, allowing Anthony to lean against him so that his back did not press against the wood and cushions of the cab-seat, but when he saw Timothy and the Lady coming closer, he squeezed Anthony's shoulder and Anthony moved just to the side to allow him passage out again.

"Where did you put him?"

"Down an alley, the other way," the Lady said. "He'll smell of drink. One drunken man more or less, shot on the streets of London, and who's to care? Surely his employer will not call for him. It will not lead back to you or to Anthony."

"Good. Thank you."

The Lady inclined her head. "What's to be done now, sir?"

"We will take him to Ducky, and then home." Mr. Gibbs's jaw was tight; there was blood on his jacket from holding Anthony. "Ziva: _the duke of Bennington_."

She nodded. "I will find out what I can."

"Mr. McGee?"

Timothy understood what Mr. Gibbs was offering him: the door to the cab was open, yes, but all of London, too, was open around them. Mr. Gibbs meant that he could leave, that the situation was in truth as Timothy had believed it to be before: they would go on in his absence. And had he not done enough? Anthony's blood was on his boots, he stank of alcohol and gunpowder, and he had carried a dead man out into the street and laid him to his rest in a puddle. Mr. Davies was still dead, whatever he did now, and Anthony still hurt.

But Anthony was waiting for him. _You can be taken with a chill all you like_, Miss Abigail had said, and the truth on her face was still the same as she stood, waiting for him, too—both of them braver, better, but still content to wait for him.

Mr. Gibbs had meant that he could leave. But he had not said, "We will not think any less of you," nor "You will not think any less of yourself."

Damn it all. "All of this," he said, "started with me, and so how could I go?" and, without any further hesitation, climbed into the carriage and took up Gibbs's place next to Anthony.


	9. Chapter IX

**Chapter IX**

Not a one of them knew how to remove Anthony's jacket. Unbuttoning it and taking it off the ordinary way was clearly out of the question—judging by the blood and the stiff, still way Anthony had been sitting ever since they had gotten him inside once more, it would be agony to even attempt it. Finally, Gibbs shook his head, said, "To hell with all of it," and fetched a pocket knife to slit the jacket up the back and unpeel it from Anthony's skin as best he could.

To Timothy's surprise, Anthony flinched away from the blade. "You'll spoil the cut, this was expensive."

"It's spoiled already, Tony," Gibbs said. "There will be other jackets."

He put his hand high up on Anthony's shoulder, trying again to avoid any place he might hurt—though Timothy saw Anthony's mouth pinch in suddenly at the pressure—and sawed as quickly and carefully as he could through the fabric. It did not fall away as it ordinarily would have done but stayed on as tight as ever, glued to him by the blood. Gibbs's mouth became a straight line.

"Why did he recognize you? Why not McGee?"

"If McGee had gone out for the horses perhaps it _would _have been McGee," Anthony said. Gibbs began to peel the separate pieces of the jacket and shirt away from Anthony's skin. Anthony's breath rushed in, but he kept talking throughout. "He recognized me. As your assistant, I mean. Oh Christ. Mr. Gibbs's dog, he called me. I had the knife but he had the reach—oh Lord, sir, you'll flay me alive."

The jacket was off. Anthony's back was a mess of blood. He looked half-flayed, at least.

"Water, Abby," Gibbs said, and she ran off for some.

"Should she be here?"

"She's seen worse than what I've got, McGee," Anthony said. "Or so I would assume, not being able to see it myself. You forget she's Ducky's ward, after all, he has not the scruples of ordinary men when it comes to exposing young ladies to the evils of the flesh."

"Then should we not wait for the doctor?"

"This is not medicine, McGee," Gibbs said, as Miss Abigail came back with the pitcher and, sensibly enough, a few clean rags. Her face was damp. "This is just work." He dipped one of the rags in the water and held it under longer than he'd really needed to—he was reluctant to start, Timothy saw, when he knew what effect it would have.

"I know it will hurt," Anthony said, sensing that same pause. His eyes were closed. "It must be done, get on with it, you only make things worse by waiting." Miss Abigail caught hold of hand and Anthony squeezed it, holding tightly to her as Gibbs began to clean the blood from his back. His face was forcibly immobile, masklike. Exposed in one way, he would not give himself up in any other—all there was to him now was the blood and the torn skin and that lifeless, rigid expression. And the pressure of the pain he was dealing so carefully and so trustingly into Miss Abigail's palm.

Timothy had a sudden idea and went from the bedroom to the parlor. He returned bearing the bottle of whiskey he had glimpsed much earlier.

"Like an angel of mercy," Anthony said. "Oh, quickly, please—no, don't bother with the glass, there's no need for all that," and, having been given the bottle, tumbled a huge quantity of the whiskey straight down his throat. "All my thanks, McGee."

What Gibbs was gradually uncovering from his back did not look like something that could be fixed, let alone healed, even by the very best of doctors. His jacket and shirt had protected him only a little, just enough, perhaps, for the whip not to have cut down deep into the muscle, but his skin was cross-hatched and welted everywhere one looked, and even as Gibbs sluiced off the blood, more rose in thin lines, as if there would never be an end to any of it.

What would the doctor make of it? Scars, Timothy supposed wearily—he would take the open wounds and knit them together into closed ones, but no power on earth or heaven could make them into anything but wounds, new or old. Like his jacket, Anthony had been slit, bloodied, spoiled. Timothy stole back the bottle and took a generous drink of his own and, after a pause in which he debated propriety and then condemned it as useless in such an absurd situation, offered it to Miss Abigail, who drank as quickly and readily as he and Anthony ever had.

"Save some," Gibbs said, without looking up at them.

"There is more in the parlor."

"Then do with that as you like, but make sure there is some left somewhere once you've finished."

Anthony took it back from them first and finished off the bottle. "If you are going to drink, the least you could do is stay and distract me. It's like hot coals on my back."

Miss Abigail twisted her handkerchief in her hands. "Oh! I know. Tell me about the play, _The Fox_."

Timothy snatched the bottle away. Only a drop left.

"Never mind," Anthony said. "I do not want company after all."

So Timothy and Miss Abigail left Anthony in Gibbs's hands and betook themselves into the parlor, where they rummaged through the liquor supply and tried in vain to drink the sight of Anthony's blood out of their heads. At a certain point, Timothy realized that it was all certainly very shocking and improper, Miss Abigail still in her wilting white gown, him in his bloodied boots, both of them getting increasingly drunk, but he could not well understand why. It was something about having disposed of the body, he thought—it had tainted him, made him different, and the difference had wormed its way inside of him. He had gone with them, to this queer house with its silent rooms and its missing servants, its dangerous men, and now he was—one of them? Or something like—and as he grew sleepy and dawn turned the windows pink, he thought of kissing her, but she was already asleep.

()

He awoke in the morning in a cramped and almost backbreaking position on the sofa, his neck wrenched violently to the side. Miss Abigail was gone and he stank of alcohol. He changed clothes and scrubbed himself down as well as he could with the water in his bedroom, but he could not find the maid to heat a bath for himself, and so, feeling red-eyed and filthy and ashamed, he crept down again to find Anthony and Gibbs.

"Good morning," Anthony said through a mouthful of toast. "You look dreadful."

"You look… better," Timothy said, rejecting the toast with a certain amount of horror. What he meant was that Anthony looked less broken, more like himself—though he was only dressed in trousers and a light linen shirt, clearly still unable to bear the weight of anything heavy on his back, and if Timothy cocked his head just a bit, he could see the shadows of bandages underneath. Still, Anthony could be cheerful, which was far more than Timothy could muster up at the moment. He collapsed heavily into a chair. "Do you remember much?"

"More than you do, I should think. You smell as if you crawled into a bottle."

"I washed."

"Not nearly well enough, and yes, I remember. Allow me to attack you with a horsewhip and we will see how quickly _you_ can forget the experience." He delicately buttered another slice of toast. "I remember that you stayed."

"I was in the parlor."

"That is not in the least what I meant, but if you insist on being thick, I suppose it's your own business."

There was a silence in which Timothy debated whether or not he could stomach tea. He decided that he could, if heavily sugared, and so was helping himself when Gibbs entered. The sound of him only intensified Timothy's headache; the glare was not much better. He supposed he was being blamed for what had happened—though nothing, he reassured himself, had happened _really_—with Miss Abigail, which was quite unfair, since Gibbs had known their plan and even tacitly encouraged it.

Though he had been distracted with Anthony, of course.

Timothy decided to prudently ignore the situation and drink his tea without comment. Besides, pondering Gibbs's intricacies would shatter his poor head entirely.

"The duke of Bennington," Anthony said. "How did you arrive at that conclusion? All we heard was quarrel after quarrel, why favor Bennington in particular? Or disfavor him, I suppose, since you mean that he's most likely to attract an assassination attempt."

Gibbs bit into his toast as savagely as if he hated it. "Most of those were local spats, some of them poisonous enough, but not what we are looking for. The men quarreling with Bennington are not regularly in London. Bennington himself is not regularly in London."

"He and his wife came for the Season," Anthony said. "Their daughter's just out. What of it?"

"The man last night," Gibbs said, "was not here regularly either."

"His voice wasn't London," Anthony agreed, "but I never mentioned it to you. You are, as usual, three steps ahead of me, and it would be kind if you would slow and allow me to meet you somewhere."

Out of toast, with nothing else left for him to sink his teeth into, Gibbs looked even more dangerous—how long had he sat up last night with Anthony? And _had _they left anything for him to drink once he was ready for it? One could measure Gibbs's anger by the whiteness of his knuckles as he pressed his hands against the side of the table. At last he said, "He called you my dog. Someone in London more often than not would know better."

"You trust more to their powers of perception?"

"I trust more," Gibbs said, "to their interest in self-preservation."

Anthony ducked his head a little. Only the edges of his smile were visible. He spun his teacup around idly on the table. "It's a kind thought, sir. And not an unjustified one. But it is more a place to start than a place to end, as a man who would whip me bloody knowing that I'm your assistant is in any case a man without a strong sense of self-preservation."

"A place to start, then," Gibbs said. "The Lady will be able to tell us more." And then, with a particular amount of concentrated venom that made Timothy _certain _that they had not left him anything to drink last night after his vigil over Anthony, he strode briskly to the window and threw the curtains open wide.

It was a bright, brilliantly sunny day, damn it all to hell.


	10. Chapter X

**Chapter X**

The Lady David resurfaced in mid-afternoon, after the worst of Timothy's headache had abated. She looked as fresh and coolly beautiful as a spring morning in the prettiest countryside and so, in short, not at all like someone who had shot a man, liquored up his remains, and then dragged him out to lie in a heap on the street. Timothy wondered if all of that was stamped on his own face as clearly as he felt it was—that, along with _drank himself to sleep in the company of a lovely unmarried young lady who has since disappeared_. He suspected it was, and admired the Lady's ability to give none of herself away so casually, so unintentionally.

She drank the tea Anthony gave her and wrinkled her nose at it. "You put too much sugar in it, always."

"Gibbs complains of the same thing," he said, with a very careful one-shouldered shrug that still obviously pained him. "I'm only trying to make it manageable to drink."

"You make it manageable to eat, almost," she said, and dipped a teaspoon in it, drawing his attention to the spoon's dubiously upright angle. "Like porridge."

"You've been worried over me," Anthony said confidently. "You've never made conversation about the tea or about anything else, it's always, 'Hello, Anthony, where is Gibbs?' and 'By the by, I'm armed to the teeth and could kill you with my sweet little gloved hands,' but not now, and so I think that the sight of my blood upset you a tad, did it not?"

"Not in the least," the Lady said. "I'm only thirsty, having spent all night and morning doing your work while you were indisposed with a few scratches."

"_Welts_," Anthony said. "Welts and long, bloody things that will soon be scars."

"Should you ever marry, your wife will weep over them for you," the Lady said, unfolding herself from the sofa and standing. "But do not expect such treatment from me. Now—hello, Anthony, where is Gibbs?"

"Arguing with the cook over something. Don't involve yourself, pray, you've even poorer talent for dealing with people than he has. Sit, have a biscuit. I retract all I said about your worries. I'm on my sickbed, I ought to be smothered with your sweet affections."

"Smothering is something I am considering at the moment," she said, but sat back nonetheless. "I will make conversation with Mr. McGee, being that he is a far better partner in such matters, I'm sure. Good afternoon, Mr. McGee."

"Good afternoon, Lady David." He scrambled to think of a conversational gambit that did not involve dead men or gunpowder and found himself short of options. "Aside from the catastrophe afterwards, how did you find the ball last night?"

She laughed. "Much duller than you did, I'm sure, for I saw the young ladies attending upon you, and one in particular."

"Abby, she means," Anthony said, helping himself to the sugary dregs of tea the Lady had abandoned.

"I can carry on the conversation quite well on my own, thank you," she said. "And yes, Miss Abigail. The two of you seem quite—fond of one another."

"She likes my clock."

"And who would not? I like it as well."

"For very different reasons, my lady." He could not think of a neater way of expressing the truth that the Lady liked his clock for its potential as a weapon and Miss Abigail liked his clock for its potential as a clock. "And she saw several interesting ways of improving upon its design."

"Razors in the pipes, I thought myself, or powdered glass. It would increase the harm of the explosion."

Anthony choked on his tea.

"More along the lines of reducing the possibility of an explosion," Timothy said delicately, "though she was entranced by the idea of its combustion, I will admit. Still, in general we would both like to work to minimize it, and simply have an ordinary clock that runs on steam."

The Lady seemed genuinely puzzled by this. "But without its potential as an explosive, what would be its purpose, aside from keeping the time, which you might have with any ordinary clock for half the effort and much less the trouble?"

Timothy shrugged helplessly. "It's simply more interesting with steam. There's a puzzle to it. And in any case, it's the future—steam-powered gadgets."

"Not a future I'm interested in living in, McGee," Gibbs said as he came back into the room with the abruptness and intensity of a thunderclap. "Lady."

She stood up and smoothed out her skirts, which were decidedly slimmer than the night before. She trusted them, then, far more than she trusted the denizens of the upper society. "Gibbs. I've reports by the dozen on Bennington, as you would like them."

"Here and now, if you would."

She nodded. "Bennington is well liked, in general, or as well liked as such men ever are, and his daughter Lucy—the one who has only just had her debut—is considered most eligible. Men circle her at dances as if they fear she might escape if left alone. But all of this, I imagined, you gathered last night, and so most uninteresting. What matters is this, because you do not know it, because it does not get mentioned at polite parties in even the most lowered voices—simply too scandalous for words, the ladies would say, and then say nothing at all."

"I've very little patience for suspense, Ziva," Gibbs said.

"Lucy Bennington has a lover."

Antony sighed. "That is nothing so new under the sun, Lady—every well-bred girl in society keeps half-a-dozen lovers on a string. Lucy Bennington would be made love to at every ball and every dinner, is it so surprising that she would take a preference about the matter?"

The Lady wrinkled her nose. "I am saying it incorrectly, we are not meaning the same thing. The Lady Lucy _took _a lover, I should say. They were in bed together."

"That is rather more surprising. I take it her parents haven't the faintest idea, since she's not yet married to the man in question."

"Rumors has it that the Duke and Duchess are perfectly aware of the situation." She spread out her hands.

"And the girl is still not married?"

"They are under the impression that no one else knows, but of course everyone does, and everyone talks, but no one has, of yet, been kind enough to inform the Duke and Duchess of it all. Apparently there is some question of the man's suitability."

"Poor," Timothy guessed.

She lifted her chin. "Cruel."

"And so her family will not have her marrying him," Anthony said. "That makes them kinder than many others. A wealthy family can afford an improper son or daughter, but most will not tolerate one, whether they can afford it or no. So our cruel suitor thinks that if he kills the Duke and the Duchess, or even the Duke alone, he throws the young lady on his mercies?"

"Perhaps. You asked for what I knew, not what I suspected."

"You suspect more than you know, though, always."

But the Lady David, having delivered her message, only curtseyed to them, and left.

"I never will understand her," Anthony said. "So how are we to rescue the Duke and his family from the depths of peril?"

"I should think that warning him would make a kindly start," Timothy said. He sipped some of Anthony's tea. It was rather like drinking down syrup. "Would it not?"

"How do you imagine that conversation, McGee?" Gibbs asked dryly.

Anthony brightened. "Simply to show up on his doorstep and say, 'Your Grace, we do have our suspicions that someone—a heartless lover of your daughter's and oh yes, by the by, that's known in all four corners of the world, in case you were hoping to keep it quiet, so do beware of strange-looking clocks?' I should like to try it, I think, and I'm fit for no heavier duty today."

"I suppose it does sound unlikely," Timothy said. He sighed, and choked down another swallow of the thick and oversweet tea. "Have you put honey in this as well as sugar?"

"Never drink Anthony's tea," Gibbs said. "There's no one else in the world who can stomach it."

Timothy obediently put the cup down. "If everyone knows about Lucy Bennington's lover, why are so many men still flocking to marry her?"

Gibbs narrowed his eyes.

"He never said they should not," Anthony said to him quietly. "I believe he only meant that he's surprised they are, and who's to blame him for that, the city being what it is? Some of them are kind men, perhaps, McGee, and sensible enough to take into account that she's only seventeen, and there's not yet sign of a child, or the Lady would surely have told us that. But most, I suspect, are interested in the money and little else, and so care not whether the girl lives and breathes, so long as she brings a dowry. Besides, you must remember that the truth is known but not known—they can afford to deny that it is true so long as it is only gossip. It is all pretense."

"Lucy Bennington pretends to have never been attached and everyone pretends to believe it," Timothy said.

"And on a broader scale, we all of us pretend that it matters a great deal whether a girl went a touch too far with her lover, when all of us have most likely done the same with ours."

"My sister says it is all hypocrisy," Timothy admitted. "Though she rarely says so in public."

"And Gibbs and I say so in private to you only because we are ourselves are so wholly unsuitable, we cannot judge others for being so. Those disliked by society must band together, must they not, for otherwise who will kiss the pretty girls and shoot the evil men and manufacture the dangerous clocks?"

"God forbid the world should have none of that," Timothy said.

"Men ought to treat their daughters as kindly as Bennington has treated his," Gibbs said. His tone was distant; he seemed to have heard almost they had said. "He has safeguarded her, let us safeguard him."

"So there you have it perfectly," Anthony said. "Gibbs will shoot the evil men, you will manufacture the dangerous clock, and I, I suppose, beleaguered as I am, will be left to kiss the girl."

"I've already manufactured the dangerous clock."

"Then you," Anthony said generously, "may assist Gibbs."

And so, later that afternoon, assist Gibbs he could, although being alone with Gibbs—and particularly when Gibbs was in a foul mood, though Timothy was unsure if he had yet seen him in any other—made him rather nervous. He stepped carefully, as if even a heavy footfall might attract Gibbs's attention and bring down his wrath. He did not understand at all how Anthony could be at ease around him, it was like trying to stay calm in the labyrinth with the minotaur, and Timothy with no ball of thread or Ariadne to help him out of the situation.

Gibbs, he thought, would have preferred Anthony just as Timothy would have preferred him, Anthony being for both of them a better known quantity. Somehow realizing this made Timothy take pity on him, his usual assistant having been battered and bloodied, and so he cleared his throat and said, "Ah, what are we doing, exactly?"

"Talking to people."

With a response that curt, he had trouble believing that Gibbs could ever talk to anyone. He tried again, "To whom, and on what subject?"

"To whomever you can think of, McGee, and about Lucy Bennington."

Timothy dared a look around him. This was a rather risky area of London, and considering he had disposed of a body in a far nicer section, he felt that put them in a very bad place indeed. "Would we not be better off asking those rather more elevated in society about the Lady Lucy?"

"We spent all night at that damn ball and heard nothing so substantial as what the Lady David gathered in a few hours on the street. Afraid, McGee?"

"Not as such." And he was not. He was far more frightened of Gibbs than he was of the lower levels of London, but that did not mean he wanted to spend much time with either. Still, Gibbs's suggestion of cowardice rankled at him—he had gotten in the cab after what had happened to Anthony, had he not? When he might otherwise have left, and returned to a home where such things did not happen?—and so he strode forward, gaining ground ahead of Gibbs, and called out rashly to the nearest bulky, vaguely criminal-looking fellow he saw.

"Excuse me, sir."

The man wheeled around with something shiny and sharp in his hand. Timothy decided it would be prudent to retreat few steps, but quickly enough, the man's face lit up. Timothy recognized him—a man called Wallitts, to whom he'd sold several of the toys.

"Oh, Mr. McGee! Shouldn't have startled me. Have you anything new?"

"I'm a bit behind in my work at the moment," Timothy said.

Wallitts nodded. "Grieving, like."

Everyone in London was consistently better informed than he; Timothy never knew about anything that happened to anyone else, and sometimes only barely knew when it happened to him. Any minute now, this man who looked to have been chiseled from granite would smile another rotten-toothed grin and ask him about interrupting Anthony at the theatre. However, Timothy was growing used to all this, so he only nodded and confirmed, "Grieving, yes. He was a very good man."

"Shame, that's what it is, pure and simple. But when you have something else, you let me know." Having delivered his condolences and established that Timothy was not currently peddling anything that might at least pretend to usefulness, he turned to go.

Timothy risked his life by laying a hand on Wallitts's shoulder. "No, please, just a moment of your time."

Obviously humoring him now, Wallitts turned slowly around.

"Not to interrupt you from your business," Timothy added hastily, "and not making any judgments as to what that business may be, but do you happen to know anything about Lady Lucy Bennington?"

The slight cast of impatience disappeared from his face—everyone in London, from its top to its bottom, loved nothing more than a good spot of gossip, and the subject of Lucy Bennington's disgrace promised nothing else. "Oh, I know her backwards and forwards—but then again, the same can be said of more than a handful of men, right, sir?"

He felt Gibbs stir behind him and said hastily, "All I'd heard tell of was one man."

"Well, one's all anyone can say sure, but who'd know the truth of that? More than one makes for a better story, and a girl who'd let one would let more, if she had her way about it."

It did not bother Timothy as much as it seemed to bother Gibbs—it was all unfair, of course, as his sister would no doubt have pointed out to him, but when was the world ever not unfair? And he had heard worse from better men, men who actively claimed gentility and chivalry and still spoke so foully of ladies when the ladies were not there to hear them. But he could tell that it rankled Gibbs as so few things seemed to, and so again he stepped forward, and tried to stop the tide before it crashed into the shore and left nothing in its wake.

"All I'm concerned with at the moment is the one that's known for sure."

Wallitts deflated, obviously disappointed. "That's the part that's all of no interest, dry as dust, it is."

He ought to have simply consulted Smith and Stebbins, Timothy thought rather wistfully. They never could get to the point, but they at least would have never driven Gibbs to the brink of murder—though now that he thought of it, they had come perilously close to calling Anthony Gibbs's dog. A hair of a metaphor away, but perhaps a metaphor was enough.

"Nevertheless," Timothy said.

Wallitts sighed but, having accepted that Timothy was apparently intent upon being utterly boring, gave in. "Oh, whatshisname. That baron's son. Travington."

Timothy could not believe his ears. "Thomas Travington?" Who had danced with Miss Abigail so many times? Who had touched her, spoken to her—spoken to all of them, as they had bowed and thanked their way out into the night to find Anthony missing?

Wallitts snapped his fingers. "Aye, that's the one. Him. You know, the funny thing is, his driver always used to be about down this way, but all day long, it's neither hide nor hair we've seen of him."

"Yes," Timothy said. "Funny."


	11. Chapter XI

**Chapter XI**

"Well," Anthony said, "though few things in life are certain, I can almost assure you that if we seize upon Thomas Travington for arrest, his parents will never be so kind as to invite us to another dance so long as we all shall live."

"I thought of that," Gibbs said, "and counted it as another reason to go forward."

"You ask me to get us invited somewhere and then you merely complain," Anthony said. He stood—his mouth crimping slightly with the pain—and then matter-of-factly dusted off the debris of a day spent in his sick chair, as it were: biscuit crumbs, grains of sugar from his tea, and stray threads from the blanket that had been draped over him. "So shall we go?"

Gibbs frowned over him. "You're in no condition for anything."

"I can stand," Anthony said, "and shoot if need be, which may well be enough. I cannot be a hindrance, and if you find I am, sir, I will return home at your saying so. But he danced with Abby, and his man beat me half to death."

"His man is dead already, though," Timothy said.

"His actions were Travington's responsibility."

"And yours," Gibbs said, "are mine."

Anthony shook his head, though Timothy would not have ever thought to quarrel with that voice, which had seemed as if it would book no reproach: "No, sir. My own."

It was all a question, Timothy thought, of whether Anthony were Gibbs's assistant or Gibbs's dog.

Gibbs was silent. Then he said, "Very well, Anthony."

As the three of them hurried out to the cab and Gibbs made a pace steadily more and more in front of them, Anthony turned to Timothy and said, "Do not be so impressed. It's no more a trick than a man putting his head in a lion's mouth. It's showy, and makes you look very brave, but in the end the lion either bites or doesn't, and it's nothing at all to do with you. It's merely the appearance of the act that does you credit. Though, from what Gibbs said about your own performance today, you clearly know all this already. That was all very well done."

Timothy flushed. "It was nothing."

"It was brave," Anthony said, "if no more than tolerably clever, and you impressed Gibbs, which is surely more than I have ever done."

Timothy doubted that, even though Anthony himself seemed to believe it. "He said nothing."

"To you. He said it to me." He scowled at the step and turn that would be necessary to get him into the cab but then stiffly carried through with it without any comment. He settled in. "Now watch," he said to Timothy in an undertone, "he'll jolt us over every cobblestone there is, and rattle me all to pieces just to prove the point that I ought to have stayed home in the first place."

But the ride was as smooth and gentle as if they were carried over glass.

()

They met an Inspector Fornell outside the police station. He was, to Timothy's considerable relief, not at all the same man who had been charged with the investigation of Mr. Davies's death and then fumbled it so badly—he was, instead, a trim and grayish man who did not look happy to see them in the least. He pocketed his pipe as they approached and turned a dour expression on them all, Timothy included—which felt a bit rash, since they had never met before.

"Gibbs. Mr. Anthony." He nodded to them both and stuck out his hand to Timothy. "Inspector Fornell."

Gibbs tilted his head in Timothy's direction. "Mr. Timothy McGee."

"Delighted," Inspector Fornell said, obviously not delighted at all. "Well, what stir have the two of you—or the three of you, I suppose I should say—perpetrated now? Who am I to arrest? And please say that David woman isn't mixed up in any of this."

Timothy coughed.

"The matter most expressly and immediately concerns Mr. McGee," Anthony said, "and not the Lady."

"We need you to arrest Thomas Travington."

Inspector Fornell raised his eyebrows. "Lord Travington's son? On what charges?"

"Theft. Murder. Assault."

"Theft of what, murder of whom, and assault in what way? A lack of specificity will win you no love from my office, Gibbs."

"Love is not what I'm looking for. Theft of Mr. McGee's clock, murder of his landlord Mr. Davies, and assault on Anthony. He ordered it, in any case, I'm satisfied of that."

The inspector's mouth tightened. "But you cannot prove it?"

"He spoke too hastily," Anthony said. "We make no charges about the assault. But the theft and the murder, and conspiracy to commit another murder, those charges we surely bring against him. He intends to kill the duke of Bennington, and will come to him bearing a gift as deadly as the Trojan horse."

"What gift?"

"That's scarcely important," Timothy said, having grown most weary of hearing everyone wonder aloud why he'd felt he had to make a steam-powered clock in the first place. "What is important is preventing the Duke's murder, which we can do only with your assistance, sir. If you have only our word to support the matter now, come along with us, and you'll have more evidence shortly—I suspect that I can at least identify my stolen property in our suspect's possession, and that ought to connect him to Mr. Davies's murder, at the very least."

"He murdered your landlord," the inspector said, "and made off with you clock."

"When you say it that way," Anthony admitted, "it does sound absurd—and you've admittedly not even yet heard the strangest of it—but it is, we assure you, true."

Inspector Fornell sighed. "Well, you do often come saying the most bizarre things, and we've laughed over them in the past only to have them turn out to be true, Cassandras that the both of you are, so I will accompany you to the Travington house to make the arrest, but if I am not convinced by the man's behavior upon sight or shortly after that he has some guilt in these matters, the whole thing falls in your hands and on your heads, gentlemen."

"Fair," Gibbs said. "He's most likely a coward, he'll panic."

The inspector seemed to permit himself a small and colorless smile. "Still, it's on the exciting side of things, I'll give you that. Murder, lords and dukes mixed up in it, and one thing leading to the other the way it does. It's like that play, _The Fox_, on the other night. Best show in London. Any of you seen it yet?"

Timothy sighed.

Anthony glowered.

Gibbs said, "Best not to mention the play."

()

The Travingtons were not at home. They were politely told that if they left their cards, the family would call upon them when they returned, though, as Anthony pointed out once they were down the steps again, that was most unlikely—the Travingtons had never met them under their own names, and never met the inspector (who had refused the donation of his card) at all, and they could scarcely say that the Travingtons should call upon them as soon as possible so they could make their arrest with all due speed. It was not a compelling argument.

"I will admit that I did not anticipate this," Anthony said.

"Also," Timothy said, "I cannot help but feel that their housekeeper rather implied that she couldn't imagine anyone wanting to call on us, at any time, for any reason."

"She did, somewhat," Anthony said, "but I would not take it so personally. I am poorly dressed, you still reek of alcohol, and Gibbs and Inspector Fornell look exactly like themselves, which is rather a barrier to being invited into anyone's home." He met Gibbs's glare with an arch look of his own and then, as no rebuke came, broke into a brilliant grin. "You are very sentimental about me at the moment, sir. I had suspected."

"I would not test that too far, Anthony."

"Nor would I recommend being beaten within an inch of your life as a sound strategy for obtaining such treatment," Timothy said.

"Well, I do not intend to make a habit of it, but I'm not adverse to seizing upon its benefits."

Inspector Fornell looked upon them all with a certain amount of despair over what he had wrought in associating with them. "I cannot arrest anyone I cannot find, Gibbs."

"We hardly relocated him on our own, Fornell."

"Well, you can find him on your own or not at all, for all of me." The inspector had taken his hat off at the Travington's door, but now he settled it firmly back on his head. "It is your situation."

"You might cooperate," Anthony said crossly. "We are trying to prevent a man from being murdered, you would think the police might trouble themselves to care."

"You've no evidence," Inspector Fornell said, "that anything to do with the Travingtons ever happened at all! The Davies case was ruled a robbery from word one—"

"It was no robbery!" Timothy said, at the same time Anthony said, "No _evidence_?"

"Tony," Gibbs said.

"I cannot press any charges," Anthony said quietly. "It was irrelevant before, and you knew it as well as I did. But as evidence—to persuade him to come—I could—" He meant, Timothy thought, translating Anthony through his own start-and-stop nervousness, that he could strip himself bare, and then they would have the crimes written upon his skin as evidence, if they had nothing else. He would do it at Gibbs's request, or even Gibbs's assent to his own proposal.

But Gibbs said, "No, Tony."

Inspector Fornell said, "If there is anything helpful that he knows—"

"He is not your evidence," Gibbs said coldly. "If you will not help, then you will not help, and there is nothing more to it than that, but he is not a fingerprint or a broken lock."

Inspector Fornell said to Anthony, "It was never my intention to imply anything of the kind."

Anthony nodded and rubbed a hand across his face. "Thomas Travington is not a good man, and his intentions towards the Benningtons are not still worse. Come with us. An official presence will be all but necessary if we find our man, and lending it will not harm you if he stays out of our reach. There is no loss for you in helping us."

"No loss but time," the inspector said, "and time is what I cannot afford to lose. I have the whole scope of London to worry over, and I cannot be as choosy as you over which cases attract my attention. I cannot spend the whole day haring over London for no certain end. If you are able to, contact me once you have found Travington, and I will come with all due speed. If you find Travington—and cannot find me—then whatever you do, I will do my best to make sure it falls under the umbrella of the law."

"That may be useful," Gibbs said.

Fornell touched the brim of his hat. "Try not to leave too much of a mess, Gibbs," he said, and went off down the street, to all the other dark places of London.

()

After that, they quarreled amongst themselves—or Timothy and Anthony did, at any rate, while Gibbs simply stood off a little by himself as if wholly uninterested in them both. Timothy thought that the best plan would be to knock at the Travington's door again and request, as politely as possible, that the housekeeper tell them where they might find the Travingtons. Anthony, losing patience by the minute, said again that he could try it if he liked, but it would in no sane world give him the response he wanted, as what sensible housekeeper would jeopardize her position for a stranger?

"Would you want _your _housekeeper telling everyone who came by exactly where you were to be found, and at what hour? There'll be no privacy left in London. She will tell you nothing of the sort, for if she did, or if they even suspected she did, she would have to search for new employment before sundown, and I am not in the market for a housekeeper, McGee, are you?"

"There is no need for rudeness."

"If I am being rude," Anthony said tightly, "it is because you have brought up the same plan three times now, and each time I have explained to you, using clear and simple language, exactly how it would be of no use, and you nod, and say that my points are good, and a moment later you bring it up again, exactly as if we have never had this conversation!"

"It is better than you, saying nothing at all!"

"It is not better than saying nothing at all, for at least I've said nothing so confoundedly stupid, though in refuting you, I'm beginning to sound as if I am."

"Forgive me for not being so well-informed about the vagaries of the quality's housekeeping."

"Forgive _me _for having a working knowledge of the world and not being some—"

"_Anthony_," Gibbs said sharply.

Anthony bit down on whatever he had been ready to say. "Forgive me," he said, meaning it more genuinely this time, his voice neutral. "I detest confusion."

Despite himself, Timothy smiled. "I had heard that about you, you know."

"There are three things everyone knows about Anthony," Gibbs said, "and that is certainly one."

"There is only ever one thing everyone knows about me," Timothy said. "Anyone in London, at any rate. I make things that explode when they are not supposed to and do not when they are."

"A strange thing to know," Anthony said.

"A useful thing, from time to time," Gibbs said. "It saved your life, perhaps, with the man we met before."

"Though it is not," Anthony said, perhaps to effect a reconciliation, "what I would say is most significant about you. In the time I've known you, you have done more than build your strange devices. You have been most loyal to your landlord, and kind to Abby, and admirably persistent in all things, even your very ridiculous idea about talking to the housekeeper. Those are all good things."

"Yes?"

"They are things worth knowing," Anthony said.

"Yet years from now," Timothy said, accepting the olive branch, "all you will remember of me is that I interrupted you at the theatre."

"That is most surely true," Anthony said. Then, suddenly, his face changed, and he turned to Gibbs. "Sir, he was right, he was just right for the wrong reasons, and with the wrong person. We do not ask the housekeeper where to find the Travingtons, we ask the _housemaid_."

"What difference does it make?"

"It makes a difference," Anthony said, "because the housekeeper we saw was in our sixties at least, but the housemaid would be much less than that. Twenty, I would imagine, or even younger. Our Miss Fleming is only seventeen—I would ask her, but I suspect she's gone off us altogether, and I blame your clock for that, McGee. The Travingtons would keep a pretty girl."

"And Thomas Travington, you think, would keep company with her?"

"If he's been cruel to the Lady Lucy," Anthony said, "he's been cruel to the maid. I promise you that. Men of that sort are not overly selective. She will hate him, and she will help us."


	12. Chapter XII

**Chapter XII**

The housemaid was Peggy Dawes—properly, she said, only the second housemaid. She was eighteen and had a smattering of freckles across her nose, which kept twitching upwards as she talked to them, as if she were restraining a sniff. They had lurked like vagabonds outside the house until she had come to empty out the contents of a dustbin, and then they had approached her with their purpose. Now all four of them stuck close to the house wall so that they would be invisible to the window, and Peggy said that she would have to talk as quickly as she could, or else she would be missed.

Gibbs nodded. "Is Thomas Travington a good man, Miss Dawes?"

Her nose twitched again and she shook her head. Anthony patted his pockets and, finding his handkerchief still missing, turned a fierce look upon Timothy until he produced the purloined item in question and handed it over to the girl. To his surprise, she did not cover her face with it so she could have a good cry, but rather crumpled it hard in her first and squeezed it there.

"No, sir," she said. "He is not a good man at all. And I am not the only one who could tell you so."

"Cruel?"

"Cruel," she said, "heartless, persistent. He likes to make you cry." She twisted the handkerchief between her hands, wringing it like a chicken's neck. "He was at me, and he was at the other girls, all the girls in the house, and nobody ever would come to us if we cried, and you, sir—sirs—you haven't come for us, either, have you? Be honest, then."

Gibbs took her hands in his and trapped the handkerchief between the two of them. "If we had known, Miss Dawes, we would have come for you."

"And to hell with Thomas Travington," Anthony said.

The corner of her mouth twitched. "But why you're here," she said, "—that's because of the lady, isn't it, sirs? The Lady Bennington. He dared too much there. Do as you like with your own girls, but a lady, a duke's daughter? He's foolish as well as cruel." Perhaps she had never dared to say that out loud before—she said it as if she were just realizing it, and recognizing its truth as she heard it in her own voice. "Poor girl. Her parents will marry her to him, and that's who will meet her at home, all the rest of her days."

"Not if he is dead," Gibbs said. "Or imprisoned. Then he will not marry anyone."

"Gentlemen of quality do not go to prison for rape," she said. "Nor unkindness. Not to a maid, and not even to a duke's daughter."

Was that true? -He hoped it was not true. _It's a sweet faith to have in the world_, Anthony had said of this belief, that gentlemen were gentlemen, and monsters were monsters, and a wolf in such sheepish clothing would surely be rooted out and exposed. But Peggy Dawes sounded more certain in her belief than he felt in his.

"No," Gibbs said, "and more's the pity, but for murder, or attempted murder, they hang as well as anyone else."

"Better," Anthony said. "More kicking. Little kicks of disbelief."

"He's going to do murder?"

"We believe that he intends to murder the duke of Bennington," Gibbs said.

Her brow furrowed. "No, that does not sound like him at all."

"It does not?"

"He never even quarrels with his parents, he'll go on his belly before them rather than argue. It's us he wants, us he hurts. The girls, and especially the ones where no one comes when we cry."

Timothy put a hand over his mouth. "That is why he wanted the steam. That is why he wanted the clock. So that it looked like an accident, yes, true, but because it would do its work even if it were never fatal. But if you lean over the clock—just before the last moment—"

"Lucy Bennington," Anthony said. His mouth curled as if he were going to be sick. "Her parents protected her when he thought they would not, they will not marry her to him under any circumstances, and still men dance attendance on her—her disgrace was not so much as he thought, not with all the money, not with the occasional drop of human kindness. Not with everyone pretending not to know. She cried and someone came, he could not ruin her."

"But he could ruin her face," Gibbs said.

"Take her life if it fell that way," Timothy said, nodding, "but that is not what he intends, necessarily, it is not his primary goal."

Peggy Dawes looked back and forth between the three of them. "What's all this about steam? What would he do to her face?"

"Scorch it, boil it," Timothy said. "He gives her a gift, a lover's gift, and that is what happens."

"I could never decide if I ought to hate her," she said. "The Lady Bennington. For she distracted him from me, for a while, but she is safe from him, too, and he was frustrated by that, and more unkind than ever. She is not safe now?"

"She needs your protection," Gibbs said. He did not say, _Tell us, please, where he has gone, tell us how we can find him_. He did not even promise to protect her in turn.

But what he said was enough. She folded the handkerchief into a neat square and, hesitating between handing it back to Timothy and Anthony, gave it at last as a warm touch into his own hand. Because he had given it to her, he thought, though she had recognized it as Anthony's by the looks exchanged between them—but he had given it to her, and fair was fair, and right was right. She looked only at Gibbs when she spoke. "They cannot refuse him from their parties, you know. It makes things obvious. They cut him as much as they can, but they cannot cut him entirely."

"And tonight?"

"Tonight is the Lady Lucy's birthday party."

"And what a gift he will bring her," Anthony said.

But even as they hastened back towards their cab, Anthony said, "Excuse me for a moment," and turned on his heel and made his way back towards the house and Peggy Dawes.

"What's he doing?"

Gibbs looked rather pleased. "What I thought he would do."

Anthony returned to them a few seconds later. "I really do not think Miss Fleming will ever come back, do you?"

"I meant to tell you that she had left," Gibbs said. "Something about the clock, and then all the blood in the parlor was really the last she could handle."

"You hired Miss Dawes?" Timothy asked.

"We _are _perennially short a housemaid," Anthony said reasonably, climbing into the cab, "and she could hardly continue on with the Travingtons after this, could she? It's a pity, though, I'll be looking for another girl in a year."

"You think Miss Dawes could not handle blood in the parlor?"

"No, I think she could face that very well, and as I said, more's the pity for losing her, but any man she gave her favor to would be a fool not to marry her, don't you think? There's little enough courage and decency in the world without scrupling about where it comes from, and if a gentleman will not take her, some sensible shopkeeper or hostler will, I guarantee you that."

"What did you offer her?"

"What she wanted," Anthony said. "Money, and a room with a lock on the door. I should hope Thomas Travington's neck does not break all at once as he drops."

()

It was dusk when they reached the Bennington house. Judging by the glow in the windows and the shadows that passed back and forth across the glass, Lucy Bennington's birthday party was already under way. At least there was no screaming, and no rush to the doors, so, as Gibbs noted, time was still on their side.

"Not if we cannot get in," Anthony said. "And even I cannot win us invitations at this late hour, no matter how glorious our imagined identities may be."

"We could just—go in," Timothy said hesitantly.

"I admire your enthusiasm, McGee, but what would we do when we barred at the door by any number of staff? Shoot our way out of the situation? That would be a poor way to repay Miss Dawes for her kindness, to treat all those people as if they were expendable on our way to saving Lucy Bennington."

"There is no way to stroll in through the _front _door," Gibbs said. He raised his eyebrows at Anthony.

"I cannot," Anthony said. "I had no notion of us coming to this pass, I've no tools, and I'm years without practice going at it without the proper equipment. I've lost the skill."

"And now you're losing our time."

"I'll lose even more of our time if I fail to get us inside!" He shook his head and then, before Gibbs could even step towards him, reached back behind him and slapped himself hard—not on the back of the head, as Gibbs might have done, but lower, on his shoulder, where the tip of the horsewhip had curled around and left a livid welt. His face tightened instantly with pain. "No. No, you're right. Come on, there's little enough time as there is, and I _am _out of practice."

He made his way to the back of the house—the door to the servants' quarters. "I promised Miss Dawes a lock," he said, "and I did not think of this." He knelt down. "That no one is ever really safe."

"You are no Thomas Travington," Gibbs said, as Anthony took a knife from his pocket.

"And I should hope never to be," Anthony said, "but we look alike, should you see us on the street, and we danced at the same ball, and at the end of one dance I took Abby's hand from him for the next, and I never saw him for who he was. McGee," he said, as the tip of his knife scratched and scrawled ineffectively against the lock, "I need the unfathomable contents of your pockets, if you please, thank you very much."

Timothy tore the cloth in his hurry to rid himself of the toys. He saw at once why Anthony wanted them—they were sharp with steel and copper and bits of very pliable wire. Anthony dashed one of them against the ground and began to pick quickly through its parts to pull out a long twist of wire. He turned it clockwise to undo its curl. He was biting hard into his lower lip, but his hands were steady, steady—like the doctor's with the body, like the Lady's with the revolver, like Gibbs's with Anthony himself. There was a spot of blood seeping through his shirt where he had reopened the wound on his shoulder and, as Timothy watched, it blossomed open like a rose.

The lock caught—and Anthony's breath caught with it. He stood, kicking the scattered toys to the side of him, and slowly turned the knob.

And the door gave way before them.

Inside, deeper into the house, where the audience of Lucy Bennington's eighteenth birthday waited, the music stilled and stopped, for it was time, as they heard the distant voice announcing, for the Lady to receive her gifts.


	13. Chapter XIII

**Chapter XIII**

This time there was no deliberation, no introspection, no cleverness—they ran for the ballroom, ignoring the clamor their boots raised against the floorboards, ignoring the sound of people hurrying towards them out of the darkness. When the doors rose up before them, and they could hear the sounds of the party immediately behind it, they burst through—the Greeks pouring out of the horse into Troy, Timothy thought, seduced by Anthony's old comparison of the clock to the horse that had brought down the ancient city.

They had come in with the gift, but hopefully they were the death of Thomas Travington only.

"What the devil? Who are you? What are you doing here?" That, Timothy imagined, was Duke Bennington—he certainly seemed to have control of the situation. And his daughter Lucy next to him.

She and Miss Abigail could have been twins.

She was holding the clock in her hands.

_Such beautiful things you make_, Timothy thought, remembering Mr. Davies standing before him cradling the clock in the same way. _Like they're spun of gold and glass and sugar. You ought to sell them as art to the quality._ That had not been so long ago, but already it felt as if eons had spun out between that night and this one—he had come so far so quickly, from Mr. Davies's carefully-kept parlor to the Duke's magnificent ballroom. From his lonely bedroom to last night's sofa, only an arm's length away from Miss Abigail. From meeting Anthony outside the theatre, even, and despising him for his carelessness, to watching the blood creep up Anthony's collar as he picked the lock to the Duke's back door. So far, so much, so long—but so little, really, for here he was, still weary, still frustrated, and still having to deal with that damned clock.

"Put the clock down, my lady," Timothy said. Already he could see the wisps of white trapped inside of it—the steam that was building up to shatter the glass. He could not have stood seeing Lady Bennington's face ruined in any case, but how much worse that she looked so much like Miss Abigail? "It will break. It's filled with steam."

She hesitated. No one ever wanted to look a fool, not in London, where people would talk—where people talked about her already, Wallitts gleefully willing to recite the imagined names of her lovers. She looked at the father, at her mother.

"Please," he said, more urgently now, "Lady Lucy. It's very dangerous."

"It's only a clock," she said, smiling uncertainly. "Father—"

"I think we've had quite enough of this," the Duke said, stepping forward a little. He grabbed Timothy's arm, his grip like iron. "I do not know how you arrived here, but I know how all three of you will be leaving—" But then Gibbs was there, pushing hard against the Duke until he stepped back, almost taking Timothy's arm with him, until he let go at the last moment.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Anthony said, and he simply advanced a few steps and snatched the clock out of the Lady Lucy's hands. "What shall I do with it, McGee?"

He could see less and less of the clockwork as the seconds ticked agonizingly by. How long had it been grinding away already? The glass casing clouded. He put his hands to the sides of his head and hammered his ears shut with his palms, as if not hearing the increasingly loud argument between Gibbs and the Duke, or the equally loud silence of the other partygoers, could somehow ease his mind and let him think. There was no room, no space, nor could he have persuaded anyone to give way before him so that he could find some—not when they'd not even gotten the clock without stealing it back again—there was no way out but one. He gritted his teeth.

"Give it over to me," he said. "Quickly."

Anthony hesitated. "I do not want you—"

"Damn it, do not _argue _with me, give it over," he said, and laid claim to it, the vicious, beautiful failure of it, "It's my clock, in any case."

Anthony handed it over. Already the glass was hot—hotter than it must have been when Lucy Bennington had been holding it, or else she might have surrendered it to them without any reluctance. He looked about for some space, any space, but there was none. "Anthony," he said, his very desperation somehow specific, and Anthony said, "Sir," and then he and Gibbs were fighting back the crowd, moving them one or even two steps away from him. It was burning hot. The glass began to hiss at him, strained to the very limit. It was his clock, his accident. He put it on the floor.

_Such beautiful things you make_, he thought, heartbroken—Mr. Davies and Anthony and Lady Bennington and Peggy Dawes and all the rest of it—and, throwing his arm up over his eyes, brought the heel of his boot down on the glass as hard as he could.

It cracked like a gunshot and the steam roiled out and straight into him. He had left his chin uncovered, most of his mouth, and he felt the heat press into him like a hand, too hot for him to stand, and he stepped back again and again, trying to find cool air, but there was none left for him, his face was burning, even the little half-moon sliver of skin on his wrist between his sleeve and his glove was on fire. Someone caught hold of him, said, "Let me see, let me see," and pulled his arm back from his face even though he fought against it, tried to say that no, no, they couldn't, he needed it there to hold his skin together, to stop the burning, the dissolving pain.

Anthony's hand around the back of his neck. "No, no, McGee, no burns, I don't think. Nothing permanent, no more than a very bad sunburn all at once. It only hurts like the devil. Let me see your wrist." Anthony forced the sleeve back up his arm. "There a scar, maybe."

He was coming back into his mind slowly and it was like stepping back into Mr. Davies's house and trying to see what was missing and what had been left there anew. "It _hurts_," he said, almost petulantly, at his speaking, relief flashed across Anthony's face.

"Of course it hurts, you might have boiled yourself alive, doing as you did." He let go of Timothy's wrist. "Which was very foolish."

"But very brave," a light voice said tremulously from behind him, and Timothy turned around to see Miss Abigail—no, no, Lady Lucy Bennington—standing there with her hands clasped together. Her face was white. The Duke and Duchess looked, if anything, even more in shock—first these wholly uninvited guests, then this nonsense with the clock, then this quite bizarre heroism. They had no idea what to think. Certainly it was not what they had planned for their daughter's birthday party.

Timothy tried to rein in his thoughts. He bowed. "My Lady. It was—"

And something clapped behind him, the same way the glass had cracked—loudly enough to split the room in half—and knocked into his back and sent him to the floor. _The clock? _But no, it could not be the clock, the clock was over and done with, he had sent it to its rest, the broken bits of it perhaps still frothy with steam and lying scattered on the floor.

Whatever had hit him had made him queasy with the force of it. He tried to stand up again, moving to his hands and knees, but fell flat at the effort, dashing his cheek, his jaw, his still-tender chin hard against the ballroom floor as he came down once more. There was screaming. Someone said, "The blood, the blood, oh Lord," and then there were two more gunshots—and _oh, _he thought, _that is what it was, I've been shot_—so close together they came in a roar, like thunderclaps. Lady Bennington was sobbing. Miss Abigail? And someone—Anthony again, or Gibbs?—took him up and pressed something firmly against the pain in his back. The edges of the world went white, then black, and then the whole floor fell out from underneath him and heaving nowhere to go but the silence and the darkness, there he straightaway went.

-And gasped his way suddenly back into consciousness as the pain seemed to be trying to split him in two. He thought, _I should stay awake to die, at least_, and reached out, his fingers scrambling against the ballroom floor, and caught hold of something that held onto him in return. Anthony's hand. Mad Mr. Anthony, who hated what did not make sense. _And where_, he thought, _can I find Mr. Anthony? _For he surely could not find Anthony now, the world being pitch-black as it was, all the lights having gone out around him. Did he know where to look?

"I'm sorry," he said, "about the theatre."

The hand around his tightened. "I don't give a damn about the theatre."

And the sharp pain turned into a dull drumbeat that, pounding, led him back down again into the darkness, and he gave into it as if this time, there would be no return. There was the stale-water smell of the steam in his nose, still, and he thought, _It really would be quite something, if it worked at all, _and the Anthony picked the lock, and Miss Abigail took his hand for the dance, and he opened the door again into Mr. Davies's house, weary after an exceedingly long day.

Darkness.

()

When he woke again, he felt muzzy-headed, and had to blink several times for the room to stop swimming around him and settle firmly into one place. He saw dark paper on the walls; felt underneath him a bed more comfortable than any he had ever known. Time to make use of it—and so even as someone came forward rapidly and said, "He's waking up," he slipped sideways again into the quiet that was no longer so dark.

()

The third time he awoke after the gunshot, the world was clearer—his room, he saw. His room at Mr. Gibbs's, the one he had only slept in for a night. The blue bedroom. He had no idea what o'clock it was, only that the sun was yellowing the curtains, but Anthony was asleep and rumpled-looking in the chair next to his bed, his chin down against his chest. Timothy looked upon him with fondness. He looked with still greater fondness at the half-drunk cup of tea on the table next to Anthony. His stomach growled. Tea was not breakfast, not even Anthony's tea, but it would certainly be better than nothing—he reached for it.

And promptly, his fingers being clumsy with sleep, knocked it off the table and onto the floor.

Anthony bolted upright. "What the—you're awake!" The sleep rushed off his face all at once and was replaced by a brilliant smile.

"I am awake," Timothy said. "I knocked over your tea."

Anthony picked the cup up from the floor. Very little of it had seeped from the cup, even though it had landed on its side, which said disturbing things about the thickness of Anthony's tea. "Never mind the tea. You'll need far more than that. Do you know you've been shot?"

"I have some vague recollection," he said dryly. "I should not like to have it happen again."

"No, I suppose it is the kind of thing you would only do once, given the chance."

"Thomas Travington?"

"The _late _Thomas Travington," Anthony said.

Timothy remembered the two gunshots that had come almost perfectly together as he lay bleeding, his hot cheek cooling against the ballroom floor. "You and Gibbs?"

"Though Gibbs will tell you he had the first and most fatal shot, and I suppose I must agree. Are you sitting up? Here." He stacked the pillows behind Timothy's back so that the uprightness itself did not exhaust him entirely. "Yes, Thomas Travington—whose man, the one the Lady killed for us, caught sight of one of your exhibitions, and, knowing his employer's predilections very well and sharing, I suppose, a good many of them, ran and tattled, as he surely ran and tattled about recognizing me in the stables. Almost a shame to kill him, good help being hard as it is to find. I suspect it was Travington himself who visited the house that night, though—given the cane."

Poor Mr. Davies, who had only wanted something beautiful for the mantel. Timothy was silent.

"The Benningtons, of course, are quite concerned about you. They offered you their own house for your recuperation—which has been considerable, by the way—but Gibbs was of the opinion that no one could ever recover himself in a house with marble floors, Gibbs being of certain populist sentiments the like of which I do not at all understand. So we brought you here."

"Here is all very well," Timothy said, as uncertain as Gibbs of his ability to sleep soundly in the lavish Bennington house. "May I have breakfast?"

"I wait and wait for you to wake up," Anthony said, "having all these things to tell you, and all you do is steal my tea and send me off for breakfast." He stood up, and cracked his neck to the side. "Gibbs will want to talk to you. Shall I send him in as I go out, or would you prefer breakfast first, to gird you for facing the ordeal of such a conversation?" He looked sideways as he spoke, as if attempting to peer around back of himself and ensure that Gibbs was not already there.

"He is no longer sentimental about you?"

"No, I have healed up quite nicely, and he no longer feels I deserve any coddling, which is all very well in some respects and perfectly horrid in others."

Though this time Gibbs was behind him, having come in on cat's feet through the open door, and he said, "Horrid how, Anthony?"

Anthony flinched—but Gibbs came along beside him without stopping, and braced himself against the footboard of the bed. There was something of a smile lurking somewhere on his face, though Timothy could not puzzle out its location or his sense of it, exactly—more the shadow of the smile than the smile itself. "Toast, ordinary tea—none of yours—for him," Gibbs said, "and make sure you eat something yourself."

_Sentimental, still, _Timothy thought, as Anthony nodded and disappeared out the door. _Even if Anthony does not entirely know it._

"Did you know that you would come out of that as you did?"

"Having been shot? It was unexpected."

"No, having not been boiled half to death."

Timothy shrugged and sent a ripple of pain up and down his back. It was a very good thing that Thomas Travington appeared to have been a rather clumsy shot, or he could not imagine what the repercussions might have been, beyond the feeling that he'd been cruelly gouged and then sewn together all too tightly. "I hoped for that outcome, sir—the unboiled state of things, I mean. I had some reason for it, and other reasons for thinking it would not be so, but there was nothing I could have done, besides what I did."

"There were other things," Gibbs said. "You did not think of them."

"I was a bit rushed," Timothy said, hearing the sharpness in his voice and wondering where on earth _that _had come from—but what did Gibbs mean? What ought he to have thought of? Had he not, after all, done the very best he could, with no time to think and no room to work? "What would you have had me do, sir, that I did not do?"

"It is not what I would have had you do, McGee," Gibbs said, "only what you did not do on your own. You might have told me, or Anthony even, to break the clock, and we would have done so." He said this with no expression in his face or voice at all. What answer did he expect Timothy to give? Surely he did not think that Timothy should _apologize _for having acted on his own, outside of his hired—or, given their lack of pay, coerced—agents. Though perhaps Gibbs thought they might have managed it better—without, at least, being shot from behind while celebrating their victory.

But he was not sorry even for being shot, not if it had allowed Gibbs and Anthony to shoot Thomas Travington in return, and with all due justice.

"I did what seemed best," Timothy said, and, because it was what he had now made some measure of peace with, "It was my clock, after all."

Gibbs smiled. It was an unexpected event, somewhere on the level of the sea turning into blood, and thus possibly prefiguring the apocalypse. Timothy could not understand him in the least.

Anthony returned with a breakfast trap balanced on one hand and one of his stacked combinations of bread and cheese and bacon—and stewed tomatoes, was that it in between?—in the other. Somehow, with preternatural grace, he set the tray down on Timothy's bed without ever losing a bite of his own breakfast, and looked almost revoltingly pleased with himself. At least he had brought a small pot of jam for the toast. He caught Timothy looking at it and said, "That's from Miss Dawes, as a very kind thank you, though why _you _deserve it I'm sure I don't know, since you're the one man in this room who certainly had no part in shooting Thomas Travington. But women can be fickle with their affections, I suppose, and in general she's a sensible girl."

"It's jam, Anthony," Gibbs said, "not a proposal of marriage."

"No, though that will no doubt follow shortly," Anthony said. "You've a visitor, McGee, someone far better in a sick-bed situation than I, and you might thank heaven that we've so loose a hold on propriety here, or all of this would be quite the scandal." In the direction of the door, he called, "Come in," and someone who was all a flurry of lace and satin hurled herself into the room, ran to the side of the bed, and clasped his hand, making him drop his toast on the floor.

"I was so worried about you!"

Miss Abigail. He followed Anthony's instructions and silently thanked heaven for the house's general disregard of social niceties.

Anthony crammed the last morsel of his breakfast into his mouth and turned to Gibbs. "Well, sir, with the children thus occupied, shall I find myself a decent chair at last, and we'll resume our game?"

Gibbs nodded, which may well have been enthusiastic consent, and the two left, Anthony endeavoring—as far as Timothy could hear down the hall—to convince Gibbs that he had been winning as of their last interrupted game, which even Timothy remembered had not at all been the case, and so they should resume play with him a number of points ahead.

Miss Abigail picked up the triangle of toast off the carpet. "I am very, very glad to see that you are quite well," she said, "only—did you really need to destroy the clock?"

He laughed. Laughing pained him a little, but he considered it well worth it. "I'm afraid there was no other option. But," he said, growing bold, "I will make you a gift of a clock, a steam-powered one, which works quite without explosions. We may build it together, as you like, just as soon as I am well enough. I suppose if you prefer the explosions, as the Lady David seems to, we might even manage that, provided you could keep it safely."

"I should like the explosions," she said instantly, "and in that case, there is a clock already here, your duplicate."

He shook his head. "No," he said. "I have other plans for that."

"I thought you thought it broken, quite useless."

"It's only broken if it's meant to be a clock."

She divested him of his teacup and drank the last of it. "What else would it be meant to be? A weapon?"

"Art," he said. "Just a beautiful thing, Miss Abigail, and I've a place it needs to go."


	14. Epilogue

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I did some revisions to the earlier chapters to fix an error regarding titles that JellyKate1 pointed out (thanks!) and to fix that brief mention of Ziva's heritage. I think this may have deleted some of the old author's notes, though, so I will just reiterate that there _will _be a sequel, there _will _be a story in the same 'verse by the wonderful Richefic, and you are welcome to send me requests for one-shots in this universe. And thanks to Cathy and Hermione's Shadow, in the reviews of the last chapter-I couldn't reply, but I really appreciated the reviews.

I hope you've all enjoyed the story!

()

**Epilogue**

Timothy had still been confined to his bed when they had laid Mr. Davies to his rest, but Gibbs and Anthony both had gone to see him buried, and when Timothy could walk again—albeit only barely—Anthony took him to see the grave.

"I believe flowers are more customary," Anthony said as Timothy let go of his arm to better manage the clock.

It was the duplicate only, and that pained him a bit—by all reasons right and proper, Mr. Davies ought to have had the one Timothy had first given him, but if Timothy had had that still to give, or to return, there never would have been a grave at which to lay it. The duplicate was as close as he could come to giving back the gift and accepting, at last, what Mr. Davies had tried to give him in return—the assurance that he was a good man, that he made things of value, that he had done right, not simply wasted time and money in a glut of self-interested experimentation. The clock felt very heavy in arms, but when he laid it down at the stone, he felt not lightened, but more burdened than ever—and empty. He stood there, his back paining him, and tried to think of something to say that he would willingly have Anthony overhear.

"The stone is less modest than I had expected," he said. "He never had much in the way of funds, I'd thought, and I at least was far overdue in my rent."

"Is it a good monument to him, though? Fitting, proper? That is what matters, I'm sure."

"It is exactly what I would have chosen," Timothy said. "It is good to think that I might have understood him so well, that I would guess so accurately at what his own desire was."

Anthony coughed. "There is a shortage of understanding in the world, McGee. Mr. Davies—would have been happy in your perception of him."

Timothy nodded and, having prepared himself now for the task of speaking to the dead—as Dr. Mallard had done so effortlessly—addressed the stone itself. "I have returned the clock, sir, or done it as nearly as I could, in any case. Your appreciation of it is what I will strive to recollect when it comes to my mind, for despite all the trouble it caused me, and all the trouble it caused you, sir, when you looked at it, you saw something worth having. And worth a little trouble. That was very kind."

Able to think of nothing else to say, and his throat feeling suddenly bottled up, he said, "That is quite enough now, I think," and turned to take Anthony's arm again so they might go out. He tried to find some lightness, some ray of dawn creeping through the clouds of his renewed grief. "Thank God you are driving us to see the Benningtons," he said, "for I'm sure otherwise I would not arrive intact."

As Anthony helped him into the cab, he turned back and saw, from a distance, the way the clock caught the sunlight and used it to brighten the stone, and he thought that yes, it was something worth having, a gift that was worth giving it, even after all his tribulations. It was not broken in the least.

The Duke received them on his own—the Lady Lucy still in shock from the events, and her mother having taken her from the London house for a lengthy recuperation in Bath. Timothy, who was nearly over having been shot one the same night that Lady Bennington had been so appallingly shocked, found this a trifle absurd, though he supposed the quality treated their daughters rather absurdly in general, and in any case, the Duke and Duchess might have wanted to absent their daughter from the rumors that had already taken wing about that night. She would not need to be gone so very long. It was London; there would be another scandal along soon enough.

"I had thought there were three of you," the Duke said.

Anthony bowed. "Your Grace, my employer is little fond of receiving thanks, and his social graces are such that you have reason to be thankful for his reticence. I assure you, he's quite flattered by Your Grace's attention to him, only objects in principle to Your Grace's gratitude, which is—if I may say so—quite unnecessary."

This was a very pretty way of rephrasing what Gibbs had actually said of the Duke's invitation, which was that it was "damned nonsense" and they might go as they liked, but he would have nothing at all to do with, having been in such houses altogether too much of late, and to no good end in either case—the latter aspect of which Timothy felt inclined to agree with.

"Unnecessary?" the Duke said. "You saved my daughter from disfigurement and likely death—at the risk of your own, Mr. McGee—and rid me of a man whom I'm sure you're aware was a thorn in my family's side long before that night. My gratitude feels quite necessary to me, gentlemen."

Timothy could think of no polite way of saying what he truly meant, which was that the Duke had turned it all sideways somehow—it had been about Lucy Bennington only at the very end of things, and his true and first concern had been finding the man who had killed Mr. Davies, who had been forgotten by all the rumors, not being so elevated, so interesting to so many people. Timothy had tried to find justice for him, and he _had _found it, but everyone outside of Gibbs's immediate circle saw the justice as having been rendered for Lucy Bennington alone. There was Mr. Davies, there was Miss Dawes—but there were no thanks from great gentlemen for coming to _their _aid.

He said, simply, "We tried to help as we could, Your Grace," which seemed the only thing to say—the only honest thing that was not in any way a lie, or mere flattery.

"As I hope to help you in exchange," the Duke said. He bowed to them—very slightly, but it was a bow all the same. "Someone will meet you at the door, gentlemen. You have my eternal gratitude, and please relay the same to Mr. Gibbs, despite his distaste for such sentiments."

Anthony said, "I will persuade my employer of your feelings, Your Grace." Which most likely meant that he would tell Gibbs that the Duke had thanks for him whether he wanted them or not, and then the whole conversation would devolve into a slight squabble about rudeness, much as it had done at breakfast. In any case, it meant that there would be a greater share of tea for Timothy.

The Duke frowned. "You look most familiar, sir. Have we met before?"

"I assure your Grace, not before the obvious."

"No—there is something most distinct about you, and I have a very good memory for faces. You look almost exactly like—"

Anthony bowed again—to hide his face? To cast it, however temporarily, into shadow?—and said, "I beg Your Grace's pardon, but I'm quite sure you are mistaken. I am no one of any consequence, and I am sure I am not the man you remember."

The Duke shook his head. "The resemblance is most uncanny. But of course you would know yourself best, would you not? Gentlemen, again—my thanks for your bravery and your consideration in this matter."

And then, at a wave of his hand, a servant came forward to lead them out again. It had been a most strange reception, to Timothy's mind, and he was puzzling over it when the servant bowed to them and handed over a small envelope to him and two to Anthony. He thrust it into his pocket without a moment's thought and, still grasping Anthony's arm, hobbled forward into the street.

"Your lack of curiosity astonishes me," Anthony said, already tearing one of his envelopes open with his teeth. "Do you not want to see how your fortune has been made? Well, I would imagine, even better than my own or Gibbs's—since your part was, after all, the most noticeable of our three."

"Why did the Duke recognize you?"

"He did not, did you not just hear me saying so? Good Lord, it _is _a handsome settlement. Would you not look at yours? I burn with anticipation on your behalf, and you've no interest in the matter whatsoever, it's as if you're made of stone."

"But the Duke _knew _you," Timothy said, feeling quite insistent about this, for he had seen the way Anthony had hidden his face in the shadows in response to the threat of recognition. "He did."

"Stuff and nonsense, McGee." Anthony, evidently quite fed up with any waiting, took advantage of Timothy's present lack of balance to reach into his pocket and neatly divest him of his own envelope. He paused just slightly before he opened it and said, "You knowme, do you not? Nearly as well as anyone, I should imagine. That is not the man the Duke knows, or believes he knows—and _that_ man is, truly, of even less consequence than I. Now." He tore the envelope open. "As I suspected, you are to be rich beyond your wildest dreams, provided there is not a complete failure of the London banking system within our lifetimes."

Timothy snatched the paper back. Looking at the numbers on it made his head ache and his heart pound. "It is far more than I had ever hoped for."

"His Grace can afford to be generous," Anthony said, picking at his nails now with the tip of his knife. "Without your assistance, I'm sure he's thought, he would have to care for his daughter all her days—now she is still marriageable. I'm sure we've all received only a fraction of the money he believes he has saved from the threat of her continued upkeep."

"You are very hard on him."

"I am very realistic about him. He is a good man, as far as the quality tends, but you would do him a disservice to make a saint of him, for he's far more interesting than that."

Timothy shook his head. "I will never understand you in the least, for all you say I do."

"I said _know_, never _understand_. What will you do with your vast riches?"

"I have not the faintest idea. What ought I to do with them?"

"You may, of course, do as you like," Anthony said. His gaze stayed entirely on the moving point of the knife as it flashed around his hands. "Certainly there is enough money there to ensure you an education at university, should you so desire, or to set you up in a shop where you might make your steam-powered clocks all day long, as you choose."

"Oh," Timothy said. He had not known quite what he had expected, but it had not, somehow, been that. His back throbbed, and suddenly he did not feel rich at all, only as confused and downtrodden as he had been before the start of it all.

"Though," Anthony said, "it strikes me, as perhaps it has struck you, that you're simply rubbish as a clockmaker, and you may do far better in another line of work. My line of work. Gibbs's. If you like." He did not raise his eyes from his hands. He was waiting.

"That," Timothy said, his back feeling altogether better now, "would be, I think, exactly what I should like."

Anthony whisked the blade of his knife back into its handle and beamed at him. "Well, that is very good, McGee, for I had already engaged to have your things moved from Mr. Davies's house to home, and it would have been very awkward indeed if I'd been forced to have them all moved elsewhere as well. You've an overabundance of books, do you know that? And duller literature I have never seen in all my days."

"You've gone through my things?"

"As I said, I am possessed of a healthy degree of curiosity. The books? They are not even novels."

"They are _science_," Timothy said, "and _mathematics_, and I assure you, I do not find them dull in the least."

"Well, I suppose there may be some use in them," Anthony said, "though I'll allow that the use is a mystery to me, since for all your books, in the end you merely ground your heel through a clock and have made your fortune for it, but it is your room, and they are your books, so—again, I say, you may do entirely as you like."

Timothy laughed. "And Gibbs? Is all this to his liking, as well?"

"Gibbs fears that steam is the future, and you are the only one who may translate it in terms we will understand—clocks, mostly, and violence. He is quite tolerant of how much trouble you have caused us, which is rather rich, considering he is the only one who came out of it at all unscathed."

"And you? Was it worth the interruption at the theatre?" He felt that he could ask it in earnest now that he was no longer bleeding all over the Benningtons' ballroom floor.

Anthony tilted his head. "I should not go quite _that _far, McGee. But should you like to make amends with me for that shocking lapse in courtesy, the show is playing again tomorrow evening, and you are, as I said, rich beyond your wildest dreams, with funds therefore quite enough for two tickets and repayment to that boy of yours, who is undoubtedly still awaiting your bribe."

"He was most appallingly mercenary."

"Born here, no doubt." Anthony, having decided that their conversation was well at its end, and having also apparently decided, despite Timothy's own lack of assent, that they were destined for the theatre tomorrow, helped him into the cab in quite a good humor. "The city leaves its mark upon us all. Now, remember, you're to help Abby with her clock today, and Gibbs absolutely forbids any explosions in his parlor, as do I—we've only just hired Miss Dawes, and I like her extremely, and have no wish to drive her away with your bad habits."

"I have fewer than you," Timothy said, closing his eyes.

"I," Anthony said, sounding most injured, "have none whatsoever."

The cab went forward gently over the cobblestones, and Timothy thought that he could sleep, and let himself be carried forward into a future he could not yet imagine. But he felt as if he had only just blinked his eyes shut when the cab pulled to a stop, and he heard Anthony telling him to wake up, that this was it, that they were home.

THE END


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